The stuff of childhood memories

Its rich creamy dreaminess is mostly down to the lush Cornish milk and cream it’s made from, and of course every Cornish ice cream maker will tell you they add their own touch of magic.

Callestick

Take Simon and Judith Parker, a Cornish dairy farming family, who learned the tricks of the ice cream trade in 1989, when they realised they had to adapt and diversify if they were to keep the dairy farm they had started in 1953.

Judith started with clotted cream and blackcurrant, which is now Callestick’s longest standing flavour and a customer favourite.

Today, the farm and business is still in the family and run by son Sebastian and his wife Angela and their children Ben and Sam.

They are still farming with 1000 acres and 385 cows producing the milk that goes into their ice cream, ensuring that they control the quality right through the process.

We asked Amy from the Callestick team what has been their biggest challenge in more recent years and it was not surprising to hear that  the pandemic sent shockwaves through the business.

‘Our orders disappeared overnight’, Amy told us, ‘there were no tourists, no venues were open and we had to come up with a plan quickly to save our team and business

‘We quickly started offering home deliveries of pasties and ice cream and it was so popular that we almost couldn’t keep up with the demand,’ Amy said

And now the business is growing and Callestick are committed to sustainable growth with their biomass boiler, solar panels and ensuring their animals and land are well looked after for future generations.

We finished our chat by asking Amy which is her favourite ice cream, ‘you must try the new and improved Triple Chocolate,’ she said ‘it has crunchy shards of chocolate throughout the ice cream and is just delicious.

Roskilly’s

Roskilly’s, based on the Lizard peninsula, has a similar history with owners Joe and Rachel inheriting the farm in 1950 and diversifying into ice cream in the late 80s.

Skip forward a few decades and in 2009 Joe and Rachal achieved a long held ambition to only use their own organic milk and cream to produce all of Roskilly’s ice cream.

Today, Roskilly’s milk a herd of 125 Jersey Cows, with milk being freshly pasteurised onsite and produced into ice cream using a semi- automated Italian system.

Each ice cream flavour is produced using ingredients from the farm, optimising quality and freshness of each batch of ice cream.

A team of 15 employees work in production to produce around 200l of ice cream a day which is approximately 2350 scoops of ice cream! Behind production is 5 office staff and 5 drivers working to dispatch the ice cream from Roskilly’s HQ.

We asked Ollie, Sales Manager, what he is most proud of in his role, “Our relationship and with the Eden Project to promote sustainable organic farming practice and of course our diverse range of delicious ice cream flavours, White Chocolate and Raspberry ripple is the best!”

Roskilly’s future is bright and this year the business launches their 2024 diversified venture into Kefir ice cream, which is the first ever Cornish Kefir Ice Cream. Ollie from Roskilly’s told us there are currently four flavours available; Black Currant, Apricot, Gooseberry and Caramel.

Our chat with Ollie finished as he told us “ I am proud to be part of Roskilly’s, it is a genuine Cornish business that offers the very best Cornish ice cream, maintaining tradition but also looking to the future”.

You can visit Roskilly’s and meet the cows, and try there delicious creamy ice cream daily from 9:30am- 8:30pm.

Moomaid

The Moomaid farm near Zennor has been in the family since 1905 when Great Granny Elsie Griggs persuaded her parents to move down from Scotland so she could become a farmer.

Today the farm is run by Bridget and her son Nicky, alongside brother Rob who runs the ice cream business and in fact, the Moomaid ice cream factory was once the farm’s original milking parlour in the early 1900s when cows were still milked by hand.

Moodmaid are proud of their range of ice creams which are all  free from artificial colours, flavourings and of course use their own milk.

Flavours range from the traditional favourites such as Vanilla Bean & Cornish Clotted Cream and Belgian Chocolate to our famous Shipwreck Ice Cream.