Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Living with disappointment

Have you ever been yearning for a specific flavor of ice cream or anything and then when you finally get it, it's just doesn't live up to your expectations? That usually happens when I come across an ice cream place that makes Butter Brickle.

The freshest, bestest, creamiest Butter Brickle will always live in my memories from The Guernsey Cow in Exton PA. The second best was at the Yum Yum Affair in Sea Isle, NJ.

At The Cow, we had big 10 or 15 gallon drums filled to the brim with brickles -- essentially the broken up hard toffee center of a Heath bar without the chocolate coating. When I worked there I would take a Butter Brickle break after a mad rush like we'd experience when a tourist bus would show up or the fireworks at the Exton Mall would let out on the 4th of July.

I'd scoop a small bowl and head into the deep freezer where we kept the five-gallon cardboard bulk ice cream containers stacked. Then I'd open up a brickle drum and garnish my ice cream with a healthy helping of fresh crunchy brickles. In the heat of summer, sitting in the deep freezer after a mad rush for a quick respite was all you needed to keep going for the rest of the night.

When you can get Butter Brickle ice cream today, in most instances, the brickles have sat in the ice cream for so long -- or sat too long before the ice cream was frozen solid -- and they turn out to be squishy chewy bits of nothing. It's probably the reason not too many places make it anymore. 

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4 Comments:

Anonymous John Young said...

Hey, is there a place where you can buy brickle today? Fresh, black-market brickle out of the back of a van? Do you know a guy? Kate and I have been making batches of ice cream out of the hand-cranked freezer, and so far we made a strawberry pretzel and a coffee heath bar crunch. But, oh man -- if we could make us some BRICKLE...

I think I need to go prep a Pelican case with a stenciled marker: CONTENTS: 100% PURE BRICKLE, and have a handcuff on the handle. Can we arrange to have a meeting in the Bicentennial garage?

7/03/2008 08:10:00 AM  
Blogger Kate said...

If you have the recipe for this ice cream (my childhood favorite too!) we could make some in our hand crank machine-- I promise to share!

7/03/2008 08:12:00 AM  
Blogger mcglinch said...

a few years ago when i wasn't working i bought a modern ice cream maker and made several batches over the summer of various flavors: gravel road (a result of the miscalculation of the freezing point of melted chocolate -- it turned to little bits of chocolate -- rather than mixing gently into that good creamy base); peach (the mrs' request); pumpkin (the girl's request: using a full can of Libby's pumpkin stuff); chocolate covered pretzel peanut butter swirl (the boy's request)(it's hard to find Herr's chocolate covered pretzels in the summer time!); plain old vanilla bean.

I didn't try butter brickle -- wanted to work out my ice cream kinks before trying for the holy grail. Recently the mrs and kids were visiting with their toddler-days babysitter and she supplied them with several ounces of Hershey's Heath "Bits o' brickles". I have them squirreled away for some Butter Brickle experimentation this summer.

John - I may be able to score a kilo of brickles and will meet you in the third stall in from the right side of the third floor of the bicentennial garage.

Kate - i'll dig into the Guernsey Cow treasure chest and see if I can find a recipe and forward along -- then perhaps we should have a little Butter Brickle challenge! hmmmm?

7/03/2008 10:50:00 AM  
Blogger Kate said...

YOU"RE ON!!!!!!!

7/03/2008 10:17:00 PM  

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