Well, yet again we find another  food trend hitting the headlines. No surprise it’s in New York, where anything goes and everything has a platform!  Thanks to one business in the Chinatown region of NYC, any time of year is ice cream time of year!  10Below Ice Cream has recreated Rolled Ice Cream –   an ice cream dish very popular with street vendors in Thailand. Rolled ice cream is basically ice cream  chopped with fresh ingredients on a freezer plate, which looks a bit like a crepe plate, and scraped into little rolls using something akin to wallpaper scrapers! We know we are not sounding technical here, just trying to give you the bones of it – but we’ve found a little vid on Youtube of a very adept Thai street vendor in the full flow of making rolled ice cream, which will help you grasp the process in technical terms. Have a little lookie and see what you think.

From Thailand to NYC, customers are lovin rolled ice cream.  There’s queues out the door for the stuff. Rolled ice creams can have anything added,  from fresh banana and peanut butter, to fresh whole berries,  coffee, citrus fruits, you name it, imagination is key.  We are just wondering whether it could catch on here. Ireland didn’t really have an ice cream culture till until the last decade or so ago, when suddenly, farmhouse  handmade ice creams sprang up all over the place and ice cream parlours and cafes opened in Dublin and other areas of the country. Good Food Ireland ice cream makers include:

• Valentia Island Farmhouse Ice cream in Co. Kerry
• Rossmore Ice Cream Co. Carlow
• Linalla Ice Cream in Co. Clare
• Glastry Farm Ice Cream,  Newtownards, Northern Ireland

All of them handcraft their unique ice creams from local milk and the best quality ingredients for flavourings. Linalla and Valentia have their own farm based outlets where you can stop by and enjoy a cone with a scoop or two of handmade ice cream.  Rossmore Ice Cream has a traditional portable and pretty hand pushed ice cream cart, which often attends summer events. Glastry Farm also attend festivals and events with their ice cream counter, featuring all the wonderful flavours of this range – favoured by some big name chefs, we might add! Will any of our ice cream makers jump on the rolled ice cream bandwagon? We think they could be onto a winner, if the current trend is anything to go by!