We’ve been having a heap of fun making ice-cream in our brand new Emery Thompson churn. The whole team have been involved in this project which has made it even more enjoyable.

Tom who usually specialises in tractor driving loves his ice cream and started doing trials months ago. Being an ex-banana farmer he felt certain we could make a great banana ice cream and from the feedback we have received his passion has paid off.

Jake usually works in the milk pack room and he couldn’t wait to start making ice cream. He is like a human dynamo in the make room, he never stops and makes the trials a breeze. He will be the ice cream maker into the future.

Polly is our resident cook and makes up all of the fruit bases for our yoghurts. We roped her in to help with the ice-cream too and without her guidance we would have had scrambled eggs rather than an egg custard.

Meanwhile our Production Manager Alain made sure we had everything we needed – often with very little warning. Thanks for your patience Alain.

Michelle and Beth organised the new packaging and the art work. The ice cream will introduce our new logo which Beth has been championing. I quite like the old logo but I guess we must move with the times.

Trish had the hardest job however i.e. getting the HACCP plan through Safe food Queensland. I haven’t got the right mindset for that compliance stuff but she seems to thrive on it. Well done Trish.

The rest of the staff had to manfully taste ice cream every Friday morning and fill out feedback forms. They did it in their smoko break as well, which shows true commitment.

And then of course there is our amazing shareholders, who helped make this all happen!

So how is our ice-cream going to differ to other ice-creams?

Well first off, it’s going to be lactose free, which means that I can indulge too!

All of our products have minimal processing, with all natural ingredients that haven’t been homogenised and our ice-cream is no different.

It will be made simply with milk, cream, eggs and raw organic sugar. We have also had to use a tiny amount of natural plant based natural gum to minimise thermal shock in our tropical climate i.e. so it doesn’t melt into a puddle in the bottom of the container in the car trip home from the store.

As expected it will be certified organic and I believe is the only certified organic ice cream made in Australia.

So what flavours will we be making?

Well we had some fun with this! We made a huge range of flavours that ranged from vanilla to blue berry cheesecake with crème fraiche.

The one flavour that really surprised me was a variety called sweet cream or Fior De Latte (flower of the milk) in Italian! It’s your base ice-cream recipe – milk, cream, egg and sugar with extra cream! Ours is a creamy milk and when we went to trial this batch we forgot to turn the freezer on in the ice-cream maker! It meant that we ended up with small flecks of butter that were distributed throughout the ice cream. Even still, most people seemed to love it as it has such a simple, clean, buttery flavour.

We also trialled a few low sugar varieties which were surprisingly nice if you prefer things less sweet. The low sugar Kaffir Lime ice cream was my favourite of all the flavours made, but Danny’s kids hated it because it wasn’t sweet enough for them.

Expect to see some of these low sugar and innovative flavours in our limited edition range!

Eventually however the fun had to come to an end and we had to choose the flavours that we are going to pack into tubs.

The packaged flavours will be vanilla, chocolate, banana choc chip, coffee, mango sherbet and passionfruit frozen yoghurt. Tom was heartbroken when we decided to put chocolate chips in the banana ice cream – he was certain it was perfect by itself.

Where ever possible we have sourced local ingredients. The vanilla comes from Broken Nose Vanilla in Mirriwinni, the certified Organic banana’s come from Poppi’s also in Mirriwinni and the Passionfruit come from Bramston Beach just up the road from Mirriwinni!

Now it’s just a waiting game as we await the arrival of our packing machine to turn up so we can start packaging and selling. However that doesn’t mean we can’t start giving away samplers at markets and events so that you can have a taste and give us some feedback. We will let you know when these are happening!

Looking forward to seeing you then