These local ice cream makers get straight to the pint: Jasmine Mangalaseril

Of many delicious icons buttery corn on the cob, grilled kebabs, tangy-sweet strawberry-rhubarb pie ice cream is the taste of summer for many.

Here in Waterloo region and Wellington Countyartisanal ice cream makers and small dairies allow more people to enjoy iconic and creative flavours whilehighlighting local ingredients, and revisiting nostalgic tastes.

Four All Ice Cream, Kitchener

Ajoah Mintah founded Four All Ice Cream in 2016, creating menusthat offer plant-based optionsmade with coconut milk, coconut oiland oat milk.Everything (including brownie chunks and cones) is gluten-free.

Mintah's chemical engineering background comes in handy when creating non-dairy ice creams.

"In a great ice cream, you have to have a balance of fat, of sugar, of water, of solids," explained Mintah. "When broken down into components, what I realized was that I can get those components from other ingredients that are not dairy. So really, it's the science that really helps us make a great vegan ice cream."

Aura-La Pastries + Provisions, Kitchener

Owner Aura Hertzog said Aura-La uses locally-sourced ingredients, including fruits and herbs, and house made chocolate, cookies and mini kouign-amanns. And like Four All, they use Waterloo's Eby Manor Guernsey milk. It's an A2 milk, which many with dairy sensitivities find easier to digest.

Here, staff helps pick the flavours, allowing new flavours to appear regularly.

"We really love giving our team the ability to suggest something We figure out how to make it and we're not stuck with a flavour for the next three months. If they're popular we can be switching them out almost every week," said Hertzog.

Kapow Ice Cream, Guelph

Pao Ming Lee started Kapow in 2021, a small-batch ice cream company. The kinesiologist turned ice cream maker sells her products from her ice cream-cycle in different spots around the city (live updates of where she will be can be found on her Instagram page), at the Guelph Farmers' Market, and online.

Many flavours are children's favourites; others are more sophisticated, like coffee-stout and black sesame. But her kulfi is nostalgic to her Kolkata upbringing.

"I grind up the cardamom and saffron and let it steep overnight, so it really absorbs all the flavours," explained Lee. "I use rosebuds instead of rose (water), so it's not overpowering I find that it imparts a really nice flavour. Subtle and not cloying."

Otherlocal independent ice creameries

• Mapleton's Organic Dairy Mapleton
• No Udder (plant-based) Cambridge (available at Flight Caf, Galt)
• Scoop Elora
• Two Farmers and a Cow Elora (available at The Hive, Guelph)
• Udderly Ridiculous (goats milk ice cream) - Bright

The rocky (road) history of ice cream

For thousands of years, fruit and wine ices have been enjoyed around the world. Some Indigenous communities whipped berries, fat, and sweeteners with snow. Others made "Indigenous ice cream" (sxusem) from whipped soapberries.

Sorbetto, sorbet, and sherbet's origins can be traced to sharab, a Middle Eastern drink.

In Asia, Tang Dynasty (618 to 907) rulers had an ice milk made of fermented milk, rice, and flavourings and 16thCentury Mughal rulers enjoyed kulfi.

Meanwhile, dairy ice cream didn't take hold in Europe until later, possibly because some in the 16thand 17thCenturies believed eating cold foods triggered blindness and heart attacks.

North America's temperance movement encouraged sober treats like ice cream sodas.

But the U.K.'s temperance movement portrayed Scottish ice cream shops as dens of iniquity.

About a century ago, etiquette dictated ladies do not lick ice cream cones in public.

The invisible ingredient

In 1893, William Neilson was Ontario's first wholesale ice cream maker. Within decades, his company became the British Empire's largest ice cream producer.

The University of Guelph offered its first ice cream technology short course in 1914, about the time when mechanical freezers allowed Canada's commercial ice cream industry to start.

Doug Goff, who's taught the course since 1987, explained how ice cream makers achieve that perfect creamy texture.

"[It] really comes from three different structural components," said Goff. "The fat gives us creaminess If it wasn't for the air [incorporated during whipping], it would be hard frozen like an ice cube A really good ice cream freezer is going to create very, very small ice crystals. You won't feel them in the mouth. All you'll feel is that cold creamy texture."