BROWN BUTTER CARAMEL
is sweetened with organic, fair trade cane sugar that gets cooked until it's smoking. We make a not too sweet brown butter custard with butter, sugar, molasses and eggs that gets swirled though after its frozen.
FENNEL LEMON
has Fennel infused into the dairy used to make its base and Maine Milk House Yogurt replaces some if its milk. A Bright Lemon Curd is swirled through after it is frozen.
FUDGY COFFEE
has Speckled Axe’s “Birddog Blend” steeped in the dairy used to make this flavor. Once frozen, we swirl a house made fudge chocolate sauce into it.
HONEY PECAN
is sweetened with Swan’s of Albion, Maine’s raw, unfiltered wildflower honey. Once frozen, it was a crunchy honey pecan brittle that we make folded through it.
SOURDOUGH COOKIE
Is a collaboration with our friends at Night Moves bread and Tandem Coffee. We darkly toast Night Moves' country sourdough and turn the toasted bread into a crumb, steep the crumb in the dairy used to make this flavor then strain it out. The ice cream has a cereal flavor reminiscent of the bread and is chewy, stretchy and smooth. We cook Tandems Chocolate Fennel Corn Cookie into a sauce and swirl it in. Friendship! Huzzah!
CHAGA CHOCOLATE
This flavor is a collaboration with two very cool businesses; North Spore Mushrooms here in Maine and Agrofloresta in Mexico. North Spore works with contract foragers across the state to collect and dry three different mushrooms for this flavor. Chaga; an earthy, woody mushroom that acts as the backbone of the mix, Black Trumpet; incredibly unctuous and savory and Chanterelle; adds a little sweetness. The three are steeped together in cream before it is cooked into the base that becomes this ice cream. While cooking, we add the chocolate paste we sourced through Agrofloresta; an educator and cooperatively minded, direct distributor of agroforestry focused, non-mono cropped farmed ingredients from Central and South America. This ingredient is as close as you can get to incorporating the fermented and dried whole cocoa. It isn’t defatted which means it’s minimally processed and very full flavored. The combination of the mushroom and chocolate results in a deep, savory, complex layering of flavor that blew us away.
To our knowledge, we are the first ice cream maker in the country to use whole, non-defatted cocoa this way and the first to have sourced through a company like Agrofloresta and we are really proud of the result.
DOUBLE HAZELNUT
This one is another collaboration with the incredible bakers at Night Moves in South Portland. Kerry and her team are making us Hazelnut Oat Sourdough cookies that we are processing into a kind of course meal, incorporating into a sugar mixture of rice syrup, butter and cane sugar and baking into a toffee adjacent brittle. For the ice cream base, we use Turkish hazelnuts that we roast very darkly before blending into a butter. Doing the roasting and grinding ourselves means we can control the intensity of the butter in a way that we wouldn’t be able to otherwise. The ice cream is frozen and the brittle folded in.
VANILLA DE VERACRUZ
Our FIRST EVER Vanilla ice cream! We haven’t made one in the past mainly for ethical reasons. Vanilla exists in one of those industries that, despite the efforts of most large importers, remains rife with inequalities and abuse. Vanilla has increased in price by ten times in the last two decades and farmers have NOT been compensated in turn. By sourcing directly from the farmers in Veracruz through our new friends as Agrofloresta, we can be certain that the vanilla is grown in a way that is regenerative for and supportive to its community and local ecosystem AND that the farmers are compensated at highest global rates. We are scraping the beans, steeping their pods in the dairy used to make the base and incorporating the seeds into the mix before freezing!
This flavor is also the first in a new line of treats we call Dear Dairy Air. Our ice creams are generally made with zero overrun meaning that twelve volumetric ounces of our ice cream also weighs twelve ounces. Limiting air incorporation this way results in a unique texture and intensity of flavor that we really like. This new line has a 26% overrun so a 32 ounce container ( which is about three times the size of our others) weighs 26 ounces. We wanted to make an ice cream that would be better for pairing with other desserts, more easily scooped right from the freezer and would be more accessible for tighter budgets. It’s not “less than” Dear Dairy Full Strength, it’s just different! We kept our margin the same by weight, meaning you are still getting the same amount of ice cream for your money but one container goes a little further (in theory…)
TIRAMISU
is a flavor we make exclusively for Monte's Fine Foods on Washington Ave. Its a zambaglione ice cream with a chocolate, lady finger cookie, coffee curd sauce swirled through.
R E T I R E D :
COFFEE COFFEE CAKE
has coffee from friends at Speckled Ax steeped in its dairy. We also bake a buttermilk coffee cake that we turn into a sauce AND streusel little streusel bits that both get mixed in.
CHOCOLATE
is made with two different chipped chocolates and an organic, fair trade, minimally process cocoa powder from Tcho. The addition of the two types of chips adds a more dimensional chocolate flavor and texture that makes our chocolate smoother, chewier and all around more interesting.
PANDAN YUZU
has pandan leaves steeped in the dairy use to make this flavor. Pandan has an herbaceous, grassy, nutty flavor. We cook a curd made with egg, sugar, butter and Yuzu, a type of citrus, and swirl the curd into the frozen ice cream.
MILKY COOKIE
is an ice cream that is flavored only by the dairy, sugars and egg we use to make it. It's a simple canvas that we swirl a chocolate wafer cookie that we bake and turn into a sauce into.
FUDGY NAVAL
starts as whole oranges that we cook into marmalade. The bitter, chewy nectar is cooked with the dairy and egg and sugars to create this flavor's base. Once frozen, we swirl a chewy, bitter chocolate creme anglaise into it.
24K GOLD
has a buuuunch of roasted carrots and fresh ginger and turmeric juice cooked with coconut and cows milk to make its base. Its sweet and spicy!
MINT CHOCOLATE CHIP
has a blend of four different organic, dried mint varieties, blended for us by Homegrown Tea or Portland, Maine, steeped in the dairy used
to make this flavors base. We temper dark Guittard chocolate into thin slivers that we fold into it once frozen.
MASTIC
has mastic in it! It's an evergreen resin we import from Chios, Greece (which is the only place these particular trees grow) and blend it with the sugar we use to sweeten this ice cream. It has a subtle piney, minty, salty flavor that we think of as our "Vanilla" but there's nothing vanilla about it.
CHOCOLATE COVERED STRAWBERRY
is a collaboration with Farms for Food Equity! We bought 400 Pounds of strawberries that would have been loss to farmers and Cooked them into the base for this flavor. We swirl a Chocolate crème anglaise into it once frozen.
GARDEN VARIETY CRUNCH
is an herby concoction of Sage grown by out neighbors at Clay Farms in Portland and Linden and Chamomile prepared for us by Homegrown Herb and Tea here in Portland. The herbs are steeped in the dairy we use to cook the base for this flavor. Then, we take Grandy Organic’s Coconola, cook it into a brittle with honey, butter and sugar and crumble it through the then frozen ice cream.
MARZIPAN & JAM
is a smooth, roasted almond ice cream base with a house made fruit preserve folded through after freezing. The fruit used to make the preserve will change throughout the summer and fall seasons depending on what’s ripe and ready!
SESAME HONEY BRITTLE
this flavor has Seed and Mill Tahini cooked into its base. Its nutty and rich and dabbled with a crunchy sesame honey brittle.
GINGER TURMERIC
this surprisingly colorful ice cream simply has fresh ginger and turmeric juice cooked into its base. It's spicy and autumnal; a perfect pairing for a slice of pie!
CRUNCHY PUMPKIN
heirloom pumpkins were pulled off Jordan's Farm, roasted and blended into a beautiful puree that is cooked into the base along with baking spices and molasses. Grandy Organic's Coconola makes another appearance here as a brittle folded through after freezing.
MULLED PORT PEACH
our friends at Maine and Loire imported a beautiful Port for us to cook into the base of this flavor that we "mulled" with orange peel, cinnamon and clove. End of season peaches were rescued and cooked into a preserve to swirl through!
KETTLE CORN
our seasonal Rosemont release has Jordan Farm corn roasted and steeped in the dairy we use to make the base. Once frozen, Jordan Farm's popping corn is popped and cooked into a "kettle corn" brittle to be folded through!
CHOCOLATE ALMOND LACE
is a textural feat, combining fair trade cocoa powder and
two different types of Guittard chocolate for fat and flavor, accomplishing a
layered chocolate flavor and a dense, chewy textural delight. This version has an almond lace styled cookie (Gluten Free) that we bake, chop and folded through.
EVERGREEN CHOCOLATE
celebrates two ingredients we have imported that we couldn’t get at
home in Maine. Mastic is an evergreen resin that comes from an Island in Greece called Chios, where my mother’s family is from. It is minty and piney and surprisingly nuanced. We blend it into the sugar we use to sweeten this flavors base. The 70% Coveture chocolate we flake into it comes to us through our friend Kristen who owns In Situ, a Maine based chocolate importing business that works directly with farm to bar producers. This chocolate comes from Tibitó, an exceptional chocolate maker from Bogotá, Colombia.
LEMON GINGER COOKIE
is another amazing collaboration with our friends in coffee and baking at Tandem! This flavor is made with a simple organic lemon zest ice cream that acts the perfect canvas to Tandem’s ginger molasses cookie dough that we bake into sheets then turn into a sauce to fold through. Inspired by my earliest “Sweet Treat” memories of crawling through our neighbors dog door (regularly) to scare the pants off Karen who made and would share with me the greatest Ginger Molasses cookies frosted with a lemon zest sugar that she made.