The Emperor of Ice Cream

Whenever anyone asks me my favorite childhood memory, I usually share the story of my first time on a horse, or the summer when my parents put a pool in the backyard, or the time I spotted a live wire in a tree and saved the neighborhood from certain peril. This is because I’m aware of the gluttony inherent in my real best memory, which is the time the ice cream man’s truck broke down in front of our house. Even typing those words now gives me a thrill, because it was a chain of events so serendipitous as to lead to free ice cream for weeks and a story that my first-grade peers begged me to tell again and again. Our freezer housed casualties of the truck’s malfunctioning electrical system: rocketpops, root beer popsicles, those push-up sherbet things with the gumball at the bottom, the chocolate fudge pops with the real chocolate bar inside. And it was all ours!

There are three things people in New England can’t get enough of: the Red Sox, Dunkin Donuts Coffee, and ice cream. Per capita, New Englanders eat more ice cream than anyone else in the United States, a baffling statistic when one considers that we spend a third of the year covered in snow.

Because we love ice cream so much, we spend a lot of time debating who has the best ice cream, and the only kind that qualifies is homemade. Signs at candy shops and country stores will make sure to remind you that the ice cream is “our own” or “made on the premises.” There are at least two places within walking distance from the Weirs that offer homemade ice cream: JB Scoops and Kellerhaus. Kellerhaus is where we are getting the chocolate wedding favors, and their ice cream is good, but they are best known for their sundae bar with tons of toppings. Of course, they pile up the waffle bowls with ice cream so there’s not much room to fit toppings, but there are ways around this. They also turn the sundae bar into a waffle bar in the mornings. If a lunch item existed that could be topped with fudge, marshmallow, and blueberry sauce, you can bet that they would have a bar for that, too.

JB Scoops, which has a shop right in the Weirs and another in Meredith, has two flavors I count among my all-time favorites: cappuccino butter crunch and chocolate obscene, a dark, rich chocolate that I have enjoyed since high school. JB Scoops also still makes ice cream sodas: ice cream, soda water, chocolate syrup, sometimes a little milk, and whipped cream on top. If you’ve never tried one, they are a hundred times better than shakes, frappes, and malts, mostly because the kick of the fizzy water. Kind of like an egg cream with the chocolate and the carbonation.

Unfortunately, you will have to miss out on one of the best ice cream experiences in the area: Frankensundae. Elizabeth Hatmaker has always referred to this place as “The Frankensundae,” and it was an ice cream place with a picture of the Frankenstein monster on the sign. While I don’t remember the ice cream at Frankensundae being spectacular, it was right by the water and had good frappes and that my friends and I would stop drink down before going dancing at the nearby under 21 club, the Station. Alas, Frankensundae has gone the way of Aqua-net and John Hughes movies, and is now the more respectable “Franky’s,” an ice cream stand attached to the Town Docks restaurant.

Popular flavors in New England include Grape Nuts (yes, it has grape nuts cereal in it!), rum raisin, blueberry, maple walnut, birch bark (no, it does not have birch bark in it), and coffee, plus the ever-popular moose tracks (of which I fail to see the appeal). My dad swears by something called “frozen custard” or “frozen pudding” which I have discovered is just like ice cream but contains eggs. There's a place in Belmont (Jordan's) that sells ice cream sandwiches using warm, fresh-baked oatmeal cookies. For other sweet treats, try Chutter's candy store in Littleton, NH, which boasts the longest candy counter in the world (it's in Guiness book of world records!) or Winnipesaukee Chocolates in Wolfeboro (on the other side of the lake) which sells gourmet chocolate bars named after landmarks in the area. I really want to try these, actually--they won "Best chocolate in NH" in New Hampshire Magazine this year, and the bar wrappers are beautiful, too.

If I had to vote on the best ice cream in NH, I would have to say that it’s the kind made by the Sandwich Creamery. I have never actually been there, but my parents love it—they say it’s just a farm in the middle of nowhere where you can just pick up a quart and leave your money. What the Sandwich Creamery’s ice cream lacks in variety of flavors they make up for in pure deliciousness—it’s creamy but somehow light and fluffy. Sandwich only about a half hour, forty minutes from the Weirs, and its claim to fame the fact that in the center of town they have that direction sign from the introduction to Newhart (you know, the show with Larry, Darryl, and Darryl?) which my dad never fails to point out if you happen to be in the car with him on the way to Sandwich Creamery. He has even taken pictures of that sign.