Flavour First
As summer comes to its end is a rush of warmth, we caught up with our ice cream makers, Baboo Gelato.
‘Ice cream is an important a trigger for happy memories,’ says co-founder Sam Hanbury.” And it may not be fashionable to admit it, but we just want to make the best-tasting gelato imaginable,” he says. Looking across the lab right now, at Annie, covered head to toe in raspberry puree, experimenting with a new batch of sorbet, it’s easy to believe him.
Having spent years in Singapore eating inspiring ice cream of every flavour and hue from durian to passion fruit, the ice cream in the UK just seemed characterless and boring when they returned home. They decided they wanted to start a UK gelato revolution and Annie went to gelato university in Bologna to learn the art. The result was Baboo, and they have been winning prizes for it ever since.
Gelato, as opposed to ice cream, is made mostly from milk rather than cream, which makes it less rich and more flavourful. Passionate about animal welfare, their milk is local and grass-fed dairy from Eastfield Farm, whose herd produces the more digestible, nutritionally rich A2 Jersey milk. And for flavours? They hunt down the very best from across the world. “At the Rimini gelato world trade fair last year we tasted 40 different varieties of pistachios between selecting ours.”
They always have ten flavours available – a combination of classics from Vanilla through Chocolate to Mint Choc Chip, and they whatever is currently in season, and encourage customers to try as many as they like at their Kiosks across the Dorset seaside. The most popular? “Salted caramel wins every time,” he admits, ruefully.
We can’t wait to stock the freezer.
