“Why isn’t this mint ice cream green?” is a question we hear often about our mint ice cream, so, we’re here to share some insight into the world of our mint flavors!

Every year we source local mint, of many different varieties, from small local farms in the Philadelphia area. We’re big fans of peppermint, chocolate mint, and spearmint which all make memorable ice creams.

This past month we visited Bluestem Botanicals (previously Barefoot Botanicals) in Doylestown, PA to pick up some fresh peppermint for the latest batch of MEADOW MINT ice cream sandwiches. Located 35 miles from our Philadelphia creamery, this organic herb farm grows many wonderful plants like lavender, chamomile, Hawaiian ginger, turmeric, hemp, and Thai Red Roselle hibiscus. They even teach herb growing, tincture making, and cocktail classes right on their farm! Their farm land was once a sod farm, and now not only are they growing organic crops but they have also surrounded the land with native plants & fruit trees making wonderful use of the space.

So what goes into making mint ice cream without using extracts & food dyes? It’s so simple, just like the incredible flavor! We put loads of fresh mint into the pasteurizer with the raw ice cream mix (milk, cream, egg yolks, sugar) and then turn on the machine. The pasteurizer heats up, cooking the dairy mixture, simultaneously infusing the mix with the fresh mint. After this process is finished the pasteurizer cools down, we strain out the mint, and run the ice cream mix through our batch freezer.

Then it’s time for either a scoop mix-in like our homemade fudge sauce, stracciatella, or cocoa cookies made with fair trade cocoa. We also sandwich the ice cream between fudgy cookies for our ice cream sandwiches. We always opt to use our own homemade mix-ins but sometimes we do use chocolate chips in our ice cream sandwiches for that bonus texture to go along with the smooth mint ice cream. See? So simple! Sure it’s not green, but once you take a lick or a bite you will only taste that farm fresh mint.

Check out this video showing the Farm to Scoop process👇

You can find Meadow Mint sandwiches right now at select retailers!

All About the Mint