Ice-cream farm scoop award
Thursday, 13 November 2008
Ruth and Ian Pollock with their son Jamie from Braemar Farm with the ice-cream that won them a silver award in the National Ice-Cream Alliance Competition.
A CASTLEROCK couple have turned the key ingredient from their dairy farm into an award-winning ice-cream.
Ruth and Ian Pollock were in England last week to collect a silver award in the National Ice-Cream Alliance Competition in Harrogate, outside Leeds, where their Braemar Farm Christmas Pudding ice-cream became the first dairy farm in Northern Ireland to have won in this award.
The UK and Ireland organisation hold a dairy and ice-cream exhibition annually and it was the first time Braemar Farm Ice-Cream have entered, having only been established two years ago.
“It's quite an achievement. We are really pleased and were very surprised and shocked when we won it, but hopefully it'll give us a bit of a boost," said Ruth.
It is an innovative idea, using the milk produced on the dairy farm to make a unique ice-cream, and it's one that Ruth and Ian are reaping rewards from with the poor price of milk in the current economic climate.
“I only use a small percentage of the milk that is actually produced on the farm," explains Ruth.
“The majority of it goes to Ballyrashane creamery. With the price of milk being so poor at the minute, the small amount of milk that I use for ice-cream is a good way of getting better money for our milk."
Ruth runs the ice-cream end of the business while Ian looks after the 120 cow dairy farm. But this hasn't been an overnight success and neither was the ice-cream.
Ruth has a degree in Food Technology from Loughrey College and had a background in the food industry, working in Quality Assurance Meats in Coleraine for five years.
Then she met Ian, who, she says, had once thought of turning the milk on the farm into ice-cream when he was a wee boy.
“So we thought we'd do just that," said Ruth, who also has her hands full with their six month old baby, Jamie.
“He's known to have a few favourite flavours," laughs Ruth.
“We're very busy, but we've plenty of people to help out and with having our two businesses on the farm it's all hands on deck."
She's surprisingly busy still at this time of the year as winter hits and in the summer time when ice-cream is the top of everyone's list she brings in a few extra pairs of hands so that supply can meet demand.
Braemar Farm ice-creams currently supply to hotels and restaurants in the Antrim, Derry and Donegal areas, but Ruth and Ian are looking to expand into the local retail market and sell it in local stores, and this award should help boost that business plan as they hope to tickle the taste buds with ice-creams like festive cinnamon ice cream and other sorbet recipes for the yule-tide season, Crack Black Pepper and Panacotta and Wild Strawberry.
“We are currently going through the auditing process for big-name stores like Centra, Supervalu and Tesco but it is likely to be into the new year before we know whether we will get a contract with such supermarkets.
“It took us a good year to get our own unique product. We use Italian equipment and initially we used Italian recipes, but we thought they were very sweet.
“Then we thought people would like a light ice-cream but when we consulted chefs, we found that they preferred a creamy ice-cream so that's what we developed through taste sessions."
It takes about two days to make the ice-cream - that's from the parlour to the tub.
Ruth explains: "We got a new milking parlour in this year and I take the milk straight from the dairy to the ice-cream unit.
“Then I pasteurise it and mix in cream and sugar, which takes about one and a half hours.
“I like to store it overnight before I add anything else to it to give it its texture and then I add the flavours for the finished product. It's then frozen and is ready by the next morning."
Jamie will certainly have his parents to thank for his love of ice-ceram in years to come
