From cow to cone: Cork ice-cream maker makes a taste of the Good life
There's nothing quite like walking along a beach at sunset while tackling a scoop of vanilla or grabbing a gelato to cool kids and parents down on a day in the city. It's not a health food, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't deserve an occasional place in your diet.
Yet ice cream is one of the foods that author and TV presenter Chris van Tulleken focuses on in his 2023 book Ultra-Processed People, using it as an example to explain many of the issues with ultra-processed foods, where high proportions of ingredients are added to stabilise a perishable product and cut costs. Some of these ingredients include palm oil, coconut oil, and glucose syrup, not exactly what you're expecting to find in your scoop of vanilla.
People want to enjoy ice cream, but they also want to know what's in it.
'We use 75% of our own milk and cream,' says Catherine Good of The Good Dairy Company, who hand makes her ice cream in small batches on the family dairy farm in Nohoval, Co Cork.
'But you also have to have some emulsifiers and stabilisers in there and that's what people don't understand.'
Naturally derived additives like guar gum, carrageenan, and locust bean gum are used to give ice cream a smoother texture.
Good lives with her husband Tom and their four children — Jack (17), Eimear (15), Robert (12), and Clara (10) — on the farm that has been in Tom's family for generations. When she was developing her recipe, after taking an ice cream science and technology course at UCC and travelling to Sicily to study ice cream making, she started with one simple ingredient: Milk.
'We're dairy farmers here, and we're surrounded by beaches, rocky bays, and mountains. I was inspired by our coastal location and day-to-day farming life. I had the raw material here on the farm, and I knew that Tom did it right.'
Catherine Good: 'We're dairy farmers here, and we're surrounded by beaches, rocky bays, and mountains. I was inspired by our coastal location and day-to-day farming life. I had the raw material here on the farm, and I knew that Tom did it right.' Picture Dan Linehan
Keenly aware of the work that Tom put into his herd of award-winning pedigree Friesian dairy cows, Good — with a background in business and marketing — had an interest in adding value to the quality milk that was coming out of the parlour. She enrolled in the Exxcel programme for female entrepreneurs at MTU and set to work on a business plan.
Although Ireland has a global reputation for producing superb dairy from grass-fed cows, Good was surprised to discover that supermarket freezers were mostly filled with imported ice cream.
She wanted to make ice cream that was as natural as possible.
'I sourced a natural emulsifier and stabiliser, because you need them in your ice cream. People get carried away about stabilisers, but the amount of it that I actually put into my overall mix is tiny.'
Good launched in August 2021, initially bringing her mobile pink, white, and black ice cream pod to her local beach and farmers' markets. Even in that short season, she could see that the demand was there for a fresh, locally produced ice cream. With the help of her local enterprise board, she set up a small production facility on the family farm. There are no food miles here, just steps.
'I go and collect milk from the tank, bring it up [to the production unit], pasteurise it, and make the ice cream in six-litre batches.'
Through her involvement with the SuperValu Food Academy in 2022, Grow with Aldi (2023), and Lidl Kickstarter (2024) programmes, Good's ice cream — each of the 360ml tubs hand-filled and hand-labelled — has made it into supermarket freezers across the country. It is still available in selected SuperValu outlets, other independent retail shops and, since April, at Good's own The Good Dairy Company ice cream shop in Kinsale.
'I wanted to take it to the next level, and Kinsale is known for its food. Our ice cream is a farm-to-fork product, with the cows roaming just 10 minutes out the road. I tell customers, if you're off out to Nohoval Cove, you'll probably see the cows on the left.'
Good prides herself on the freshness of the ice cream. 'My production facility is very small here on the farm, and everything is made fresh. I organise my production days so that the stock goes straight to the shop that week.'
The proof is in the tasting, and her flagship Udderly Vanilla variety is deliciously rich and full of flavour. As an occasional treat, this small batch, locally made ice cream, produced on the family farm using a high proportion of creamy milk from Cork pastures, is a winner.
Buying local: fresh ice cream from Irish farms
Boulabán Farm, Co Tipperary: Located between Roscrea and Templemore, Michael and Kate Cantwell started making ice cream from the milk of their Holstein-Friesian cows in 2006. While they primarily supply hotels and restaurants, they also operate a click-and-collect service from the farm for ice cream orders, available in small 125ml tubs and large 2.5l cartons. boulabanfarm.ie
Baldwin's Farmhouse Ice Cream, Co Waterford: Inspired by a trip to the Netherlands, Thomas Baldwin started his business in 2007. He uses crème anglaise method, combining fresh milk from the family herd with free-range egg yolks, sugar, and ingredients like strawberries from Dungarvan's Glen Fruits. The ice cream is made on the farm near Knockanore, and is widely available in Cork and Waterford. baldwinsicecream.com
Glastry Farm, Co Down: William and Cynthia Taylor started producing ice cream on the Ards Peninsula in 2007 using milk from the family farm, which is now run by their son Gareth and his wife Liz. They make about 17 flavours of ice cream, including local variations such as Yellowman Honeycomb and St Brendan's Irish Cream. Stocked at a variety of locations in Northern Ireland and Dublin. glastryfarm.com
Muckross Creamery, Co Kerry: Just outside Killarney, dairy farmer John Fleming offers cow to cone tours (€28) on the family farm. Showcasing the cows and the land where the milk comes from, the milking parlour, and production space, there's also the opportunity to try a scoop at the on-site ice cream parlour. Muckross Creamery also takes ice cream to events in a repurposed horse box: just watch out for the queues. muckrosscreamery.ie
Linnalla Ice Cream, Co Clare: Brid Fahy has been using milk from the native Burren shorthorn cows farmed by her husband, Roger, along with local ingredients like blackcurrants and wild hazelnuts, to make ice cream since 2006. It's available in Cafe Linnalla, the ice cream parlour which they built on their farm. Located in the Burren and Cliffs of Moher UNESCO Global Geopark, they are part of the Burren Ecotourism Network, a network of sustainable tourism businesses, and also offer farm tours. linnallaicecream.ie
Make it yourself
The simplest homemade ice cream recipe only requires a freezer and two basic ingredients: one (397g) tin of sweetened condensed milk and 500ml of cream.
Whip the two together until soft peaks form, then pour into a clean, empty ice cream tub and freeze for a minimum of four hours or overnight.
Before freezing, add vanilla extract for a classic flavour, chopped chocolate for a chocolate chip variation, or swirl through raspberry puree for a raspberry ripple. It really is that easy.
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It really is that easy.
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