This Dairy Farm Figured Out How to Make Ice Cream Even Creamier

At the end of a winding country lane, in the heart of the Cornish countryside, is Callestick Farm, a dairy farm that makes clotted cream ice cream. As I approach the building, I pass a smattering of visitors slurping on heaving vanilla cones.

"Whenever I get invited out for dinner these days, ice cream is a must to take with me," says Angela Parker, whose family has been making ice cream at the farm for 25 years. "It seems a fair swap for dinner, I suppose!"

Clotted cream, the rich dairy product usually heaped onto scones and doused with jam, is a favourite among the many tourists who visit the south west of England each year. Since 1998, the cream has had Protected Designation of Origin status in the European Union, meaning it must be made from milk produced in Cornwall.

While many in the region make their living hawking cream teas to visitors, Callestick is one of the few family-owned dairy farms to produce their own ice cream.

"When we started using clotted cream in ice cream, we were trading from an ice cream truck in Truro and people would immediately pick up on the unique taste," says Parker, as we walk past some of the farm's cows. "Clotted cream is milk that has been separated, with the cream being re-cooked and left to cool slowly, which pasteurises it and gives it a very distinctive taste."

This distinctive taste also comes from a cooling process that sees the cream content rise to the surface and form "clots" or "clouts."

"It's thicker and richer," says Parker. "You get a much stronger and concentrated flavour although it's hard to put into words, you'll have to try some."

Needing no further encouragement, I try a generous scoop of the clotted cream vanilla. She's right about the distinctive taste.

Back at the factory, Parker shows me how the milk flows through a heating tank before being turned into ice cream.

"We use fresh, unpasteurised milk, coming straight from our cows," she explains. "We take what we need on a daily basis, pump it in a pipe from the diary to factory into a vat to be pasteurised with the sugar and skimmed milk powder for protein."

This pasteurisation process sees the milk heated at 65.5 degrees Celsius for half an hour.

"God help you if you don't pasteurise it!" says Parker. "This kills any bacteria that may be in the milk, as it's a product that will never be cooked. It's the critical control point."

Heading up the stairs into the viewing gallery, she points down to a row of large stainless steel vats.

"What's different to mass production is that it would normally be a very quick process," she explains. "We age the mix to allow it to mature and saturate, with the full dairy flavours coming through."

This attention to detail starts before the milk reaches the factory. Callestick's 100 cows roam across the idyllic Cornish pastures and are milked twice a day, something Parker sees as crucial to their ice cream's success in the face of cheaper alternatives.

"People will still treat themselves, as long as they get a quality treat," she says.

While Callestick's customers may be willing to treat themselves, figures suggest that the British love affair with ice cream could be melting away. According to a 2014 report from market research company Mintel, the volume of ice cream being sold in the UK declined by almost 5 percent between 2009 and 2014, suggesting that the dessert could be "falling out of people's repertoire."

Despite these figures, Parker maintains that Callestick's ice cream, including less traditional flavours like butterscotch and pecan and white chocolate and raspberry, remain popular.

"It's not a trend we're experiencing," she says. "The quality ice cream area is growing, our figures show it."

But it's not been an easy few years for the ice cream industry. Back in 2012, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs issued bizarre guidance to operators of the UK's much loved musical ice cream vans on "minimising annoyance or disturbance," but it was change to regulations that dictate the composition of ice cream that may have been the biggest blow.

Earlier this year, the government abolished the minimum amounts of milk and fat required for products to pass as ice cream, meaning that non-dairy products can now pass as the stuff. In a statement on the Ice Cream Alliance website, Chief Executive Office Zelica Carr claimed this ruling had "opened the floodgates to inferior products coming onto the market purporting to be traditional ice cream."

"It seems that some people traded down," adds Parker. "They're buying cheap products, which you can understand given the economy. But ice cream that is mass-produced is just not the same."

A quick look in the Tesco freezer aisle would suggest so too. The supermarket's Everyday Value 2 litre tub of Soft Scoop Vanilla may come in at the knock down price of 89p, but the closest you'll get to Cornish milk and cream in the ingredients is "partially reconstituted skimmed milk concentrate," mixed with palm oil and stearin.

Perhaps the answer is to try recreating Callestick's famous clotted cream ice cream at home?

"Making it with clotted cream is tough," says Parker, as I say my goodbyes. "You're best off eating the proper Cornish stuff!"