Arts & Leisure
Posted on January 27, 2016 04:43:00 PM
By Nickky Faustine P. de Guzman, Reporter
Becoming the Ice Cream Man
THE LOVE of ice cream knows no age. At 79, Pope Francis enjoyed his ice cream on the way back to Rome after visiting the Philippines last year. He had malted milk and brown butter almond brittle flavors. News reports said he liked them very much. But while ice cream doesn’t discriminate, ice cream lovers with discerning tastes know when ice cream is all fluff and dress up.
CARMEN’S BEST Madagascar Vanilla
“This is why I am brave to export: because I know our ice cream is a quality,” Paco Magsaysay, the man behind the ice cream brand, told the BusinessWorld on Jan. 19 en route to Los Baños, Laguna, where he gets his fresh milk.
He said authentic ice cream is made of 80% fresh milk and not water or milk powder. His is homemade and made with love. It’s artisanal ice cream crafted the old-fashioned way: with no additives and not mass-produced. It helps that the ingredients used are some of the finest in the globe: the vanilla beans come from Madagascar and the malted milk from England, for instance.
HOW IT STARTED
Carmen’s Best traces its beginnings to the 27-hectare dairy farm in Laguna, owned by Mr. Magsaysay’s father, former Senator Ramon Magsaysay, Jr., who acquired it in 2008. Here, 264 cows live where the air is fresh and only green is seen. The cows were flown in from New Zealand and are quite a spoiled bunch: they listen to classical music every day at four in the morning and four in the afternoon, when they are milked. Only women can milk the cows, because they have softer, gentler hands. Mr. Magsaysay said the cows, like humans, are prone to stress.
But the farm had a surplus problem. What to do with the extra fresh milk? In 2009, the Senator’s son started Carmen’s Best Dairy Products, turning the excess milk into yogurt, cheese, and pastillas (milk candies). “But everybody makes pastillas,” Mr. Magsaysay realized.
That was when he decided to make ice cream instead. Why not make the best ice cream in town? Ice cream that doesn’t melt right away, and that is filling and fulfilling? But he soon realized problems when it came to flavors. “Vanilla is very common,” he said. So he started with four flavors the market wasn’t used to: butter pecan, malted milk, coffee, and salted caramel.
His ice cream doesn’t melt easily because it is made from pure, fatty, cow milk, he said, unlike other ice cream on the market made from powdered milk and water.
He named his ice cream after his daughter, Carmen. (He also has two sons.)
“We have this notion that desserts cater to women more than the men. I mean, look at Mrs. Fields cookies. I think no one would buy if I named it Paco’s Best,” he said, laughing.
He likens ice cream to a young girl’s roller coaster-like emotions. It is the happy pill after a break up, and the mood-booster to PMS (premenstrual syndrome). Hence, some of his ice cream flavors are named “He’s Not Worth It” (a dark chocolate ice cream with Oreo cookies, walnuts, pecan, and caramel fudge) and “Nuts About You” (a maple-flavored ice cream fully loaded with, what else, nuts).
PERSONAL FAVORITES
He started selling Carmen’s Best ice cream in February 2011, but said he wasn’t taking the new-found business seriously. But he soon knew that he was on the right path when the sales of his creations started to pick up through the word of mouth, just as Häagen-Dazs Philippines ended in mid-2012.
“The goal is to be better than Häagen-Dazs and Ben and Jerry’s,” said Mr. Magsaysay, who is now a legitimate “Ice Cream Man” after taking an ice cream short course at Pennsylvania State University in 2013. (Ben & Jerry’s ice cream founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield were also alumni of the Penn State ice cream course.)
Mr. Magsaysay’s personal favorites are pistachio and tres leches (sponge cake in milky ice cream). So far, there are 38 flavors to choose from. They range from local -- coconut, ube(purple yam), cheese macapuno (young coconut meat), and pineapple sherbet -- to classics like cookies and cream, rocky road, dark chocolate, strawberry, salted caramel, and milk chocolate, and contemporary flavors like brown butter almond brittle, Turkish baklava, Twix chocolate bars, and one that is spiked with whiskey.
No one knows what other flavors Carmen’s Best will be offering here and abroad, but Paco Magsaysay, the country’s Ice Cream Guy.
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