News / Elderflower ice cream proves a winner
A DAIRY produce maker with an emphasis on using unique flavours says she is “chuffed to bits” after one of her ice creams won a prize at what is considered to be Scotland’s largest one-day agricultural show.
Caroline Henderson, who runs the Artisan Island Cheese company from the kitchen of her Peerie Foxes nursery in Lerwick, had been invited to enter one of her boutique ice creams into this year’s Dumfries Show.
She didn’t know, however, that her elderflower product won the ice cream category until she read the results on the show’s website earlier this week.
Henderson launched her company around seven years ago at Hoofields when she began to create a range of cheese.
However, she more recently began dipping into ice creams before selling them at local shows and market fairs.
The award-winning elderflower ice cream has not been on regular sale to the public, but Lerwick’s Scoop is set to stock it from this weekend onwards.
Henderson uses Shetland Farm Dairies’ double cream to give it an extra local angle.
“The elderflower flavour has been the most popular consistently,” she said. “I also do liquorice, lavender and wort, which is something you get from the brewery.
“There wasn’t really any different ice creams up here. I just wanted to try some different flavours you don’t normally get.”
So are there any new tastes in the pipeline for Artisan Island?
“It would be lovely to use locally grown strawberries for a fruit ice cream,” Henderson replied. “But there aren’t enough.”
She added that experiments with dairy-free ice cream are also on the agenda.
The dairy queen is kept busy by juggling the popular Peerie Foxes nursery with her cheese and ice cream business – but it seems Henderson wouldn’t have it any other way.
“I started the cheese business in Hoofields and it ran through until about a year ago when the nursery moved in here and we got the approval to do it in the kitchen,” she said.
“I’d like to keep doing both [the cheese and the ice cream]. Obviously the ice cream is a bit more seasonal than the cheese, though.”
Henderson pocketed the princely sum of £20 for her winning the Dumfries Show award – but the feeling of bagging the prize is reward enough.
“I didn’t get a ribbon or anything,” she quipped.
“I don’t think I’ll cash the cheque – I’ll maybe pin it on the wall, because I’m so chuffed to bits with it.”
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