Holy moly. Ice cream AND cute animals? What genius thought of this combination?
A hungover group of twenty-somethings and one teenager descended on this place after a night of drinking games in Chester. Yes, what had started as a civilised summer afternoon with a barbecue and Pimm's had turned into something altogether darker and more humiliating. Anyway, that aside, the weather was delightfully warm as he approached this quaint little farm with the sole intention of filling up on icy treats. As my friend said, the animals can wait. We did go pet them afterwards, little Shetland ponies and piglets and adorable things, so don't feel too bad.
Like the zoo and Cheshire Oaks, this region of Greater Manchester is worth travelling out of the city for. Ice cream so good that Ben and Jerry would have been proud of it? Yes indeed. Far, far too delicious was this stuff. Let me talk you through the flavours, separated into the equally tempting 'deluxe', 'luxury' and 'special luxury' categories. For deluxe, there's your classic vanilla (an award winner) with all the little black pods still visible in the melty goodness to ensure you know you're getting the finest quality beans, strawberries and cream, chocolate (another award winner), banana, Cheshire Plain, an unusual option that has no additional flavouring and is simply the base for all the different kinds, mint choc chip, rum and raisin, coconut, honeycomb (ANOTHER award winner and rightly so, I tasted this one and went to ice cream heaven - simply Cheshire Plain with big chunks of cinder toffee, some of which have melted... ommm), stem ginger and cinnamon, something I'm desperate for my father to try as cinnamon is one of his favourite all-time flavours for anything, from chewing gum to ice cream, pies to toast.
Luxuries incorporate liquorice and blackcurrant, rhubarb and custard, white chocolate (another worthy award winner), raspberry pavlova, toffee fudge, forest fruits, Baileys (be still my beating heart), apple pie and custard (I'm actually drooling now), butterscotch, and two award winners - banoffee and rhubarb and stem ginger. Finally, for the special luxuries, as if all that wasn't special enough, there's malt tease (I'm a total honeycomb junkie and of course combined this one with the honeycomb flavour, and oh my word, is it good), cointreau and orange, choc fudge cookie, pistachio (another of my father's fave flavours) and mocha coffee bean. There's a great range of sorbets too, but while sometimes I'll opt for a low fat alternative to ice cream I can't here. I physically can't. The ice cream is too delicious to resist. There are seasonal flavours such as Christmas pudding and champagne sorbet, and a variety of diabetic ice creams too.
The ice cream is made there at the farm, from cow to freezer in a matter of 24 hours. It offers itself up as a venue for kids' parties, where birthday girls and boys can use an ice cream machine to make unique flavours. Seriously, ice cream lovers, this is worth a trip. And then another, and then another. Hold on, do my jeans feel tighter this year? read more