Gorse Flowers feature in new Ice Cream

The market potential of a unique gorse flower ice cream flavour is being evaluated by Northern Ireland's award winning Glastry Farm Ice Cream.

The gorse flower ice cream is part of a new range being developed and test marketed by the company which has won Great Taste Awards, featured in the Great British Menu Gala Banquet in 2010, and is listed in the Bridgestone Irish Food Guide.

Glastry's ice cream has been used at the Royal Garden Parties in 2008 and 2009. Glastry's novel Kilbeggan Irish Whiskey Ice Cream has also won an International Wine and Spirit Award and was recently named as the most innovative product by the Northern Ireland Food and Drink Association.

Gorse flower ice cream and other new products are being assessed by the company to see if they meet demands from upmarket restaurants and hotels in the UK and Ireland for different and unique flavours for dessert menus.

Dairy farmer Will Taylor, who set up the luxury ice cream business as a diversification project in 2006, says: "We work closely with a number of leading chefs to develop unique flavours that enable them to add something different to their menus. Our focus is on natural products from local sources to blend with milk from our dairy herd.

"Gorse is among the most natural and plentiful plants available here in Northern Ireland and so I decided to see if it would work as an ice cream. It has a coconut scent and taste.

"We picked the flowers during a dry sunny period in February and dried them before mixing with glucose and milk in our on-farm processing plant. The result is an ice cream with a distinct coconut taste.

"Taste panels produced a very positive feedback which has encouraged us to consider the further development of the product for our extensive portfolio of ice creams for foodservice and retail outlets. While the new ice cream is likely to be geared initially for foodservice customers, in time we may consider extending it to our growing network of retailers."

Among the company's foodservice clients is the National Trust's prestigious Mount Stewart House in Northern Ireland, ancestral seat of the Londonderry family. It has created a lavender and raspberry ice cream to the organisation.

The Taylor family have been dairy farming at Glastry since 1856. Today the premium milk from the pedigree dairy herd is used to produce the rich and creamy ice cream fresh every day in a modern processing plant.

The company also produces other desserts including ice cream cakes and fruit sorbets.