Ice cream with West Texas flavors
“It's hard to be mad when you're enjoying an ice cream.”
Those words from JP Hearn of Midland apply to just about everybody. Ice cream soothes the savage beast within us all. No matter whether it's summer or win- ter or whether you're 80 or 8, ice cream takes the edge off and makes things smooth.
JP has an ice cream parlor called Fountainville, a one of a kind store, not a franchise. It's a fountain of blessings to his customers.
“We make our ice cream from scratch and we kind of like to feature flavors that represent where we're from. One of our top flavors is Tumbleweed. We do Black Gold, which is a black ice cream that has the flavor of local honey and graham cracker. Other flavors are Sandstorm, Caliche, you know, really fun flavors that reflect where we're from.”
Fountainville has 20 flavors of ice cream. Black Gold is the best seller.
“The color comes from coconut charcoal and the flavor, with that graham cracker and honey taste, is a twist on the flavor. That's by far our number one seller. Some customers come in and it's Black Gold or nothing. Sometimes we sell out and they'll say that they'll keep watching until we have it or they'll call before they come. Fans can only go a week or so without ice cream.”
I prefer the Tumbleweed flavor.
“It's got caramel and chocolate and toasted coconut. The color is kind of a toasted coconut color with some chocolate and caramel mixed in.”
JP went to culinary school and has a degree in pastries and desserts. He had an oil field catering business and took a big trailer to the oil patch so the workers could go through a buffet inside. He opened Fountainville four years ago.
“People love ice cream and I thought West Texas needed its own ice cream. That's how Fountainville came about. Of course we have a soda fountain from the 40s and have homemade soft drinks and other items. We make our own waffle cones. We serve our ice cream in cones and bowls in different sizes.”
He has made 50 tons of ice cream since opening and now has 2 locations.
“We just recently became a Go TEXAN certified ice cream shop, the only one in West Texas. We were selected because we use local ingredients and we make our own base and things like that. We love to represent West Texas with our ice cream.”
He'll spend 6 hours getting a new batch ready. Ingredients include 30 gallons of milk, 21 gallons of heavy cream, 16 pounds of dry milk, 80 pounds of sugar, a gallon of corn syrup and a little bit of stabilizer to hold it all together. Special equipment heats and cools the mixture.