Sweet party favour a big hit

By bringing along creamy mixture and maker, group- friendly desserts are a breeze

Before I had any sisters to compete with, my father would take me to Mutual Dairies, a squat, grey brick building, close to the Rideau Canal. I would always choose banana ice cream and we would walk down to the canal to finish our cones. It was there that my father taught me how to eat an ice cream cone properly by licking from the bottom of the scoop and not devouring madly from the top. This also made it much less messy, which made my father happy.

I’m old enough to have experienced the Good Humor Man, who pushed a cart from which Creamsicles, chocolate eclairs, and strawberry shortcake bars on sticks poured forth.

At my first Howard Johnson’s restaurant in Lake Placid, N. Y., the menu presented a dizzying array of ice cream flavours, more flavours than I ever thought possible. My excitement rose. How could I choose just one flavour? I finally settled on the mint chocolate chip. It was the most exciting thing I had ever tasted and lived on in my lexicon of exciting things to eat for most of my childhood.

Back home, I was deeply disappointed every time I passed the ice cream freezer in the grocery store. There was never any mint chocolate chip ice cream. The spumoni and Neapolitan — two that I never really liked — looked at me smugly.

In between ice cream cones, there were Fudgsicles, Creamsicles and Popsicles. The Hog’s Back concession served Mel- ORolls, which were paper wrapped logs of ice cream that were much easier to push in a cone than scooped ice cream.

Nothing was that exciting in ice creamland until a Baskin Robbins opened just up the street from me when I was 20 or so. My signature combination was a two- scooper of pumpkin ice cream and chocolate fudge brownie. It was a fleeting and cherished experience because pumpkin ice cream only appeared in the fall. It is possible, though my recollection is hazy, that I tried all the flavours except for pink bubble gum. That was just too weird. Pralines ‘ n’ Cream was also a perennial favourite.

Haagen- Dazs rocked my world. Maple Walnut and Coffee, then later, Caramel Crunch Explosion. Visiting the United States and observing the flavours and the size of the containers gave me the same pangs I had after my childhood Howard Johnson’s experience. My childish self was deeply disappointed that all those flavours were not available here.

Some of the best moments were offshore. Corn ice cream in Mexico, green tea, and black sesame ice cream in Japan, and a trio of odd Haagen- Dazs flavours in Schipol Airport; cumin, Moroccan, and rosewater. Basil ice cream in Seattle. Then there was that vanilla ice cream floating in a small glass of espresso, at a restaurant in San Francisco.

Try as I might, I never could recreate the texture of that combination.

You would think with all this ice cream love, that I would have been an early adopter of an ice cream maker of some sort. I did have a miserable experience with a poorly designed electric one, but I didn’t actually discover what a joy it was to make my own until a friend sang the praises of her Donvier. I was a little skeptical but took the plunge.

Holy wow! In no time I was cranking out chocolate Jack Daniels, burnt caramel, mango, any fruit or berry in season, and my beloved corn ice cream. Frozen yogurt and sorbet was a breeze. When not being pressed into service, the frozen canister served double- duty as a wine chiller on hot summer nights.

But the absolute best was bringing dessert to dinner parties. I would bring the ready- made ice cream mixture and my little cranker. After dinner I would fill it and we would all take turns passing it around for a few cranks each until the custard turned into ice cream. And the best of the best was making ice cream with the blackberries we had just picked that morning.