Over in State College, the Penn State Creamery is the local ice cream institution. Owing to Pennsylvania’s heritage as a largely agricultural state, PSU has the largest university creamery in the nation. The Associated Press’ Robin Crawford just interviewed Tom Palchak, the manager of the Creamery:
Recognizing a good thing, the Creamery got busy coming up with new flavors - 10 to 12 a year for the next 10 years or so. Some, like pumpkin pie, were good; others, like carrot cake, were not so great and were quickly retired. Today, there are more than 150 flavors of ice cream, frozen yogurt, sherbet and no-sugar ice cream on file at the Creamery, but only 25 or so on the menu at any given time.That seems to be plenty for customers, who buy more than 750,000 hand-dipped cones at the store each year (45,000 are sold during the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts alone). All told, 180,000 gallons are consumed just on campus every year.If you can’t live without a daily dose of Death by Chocolate, give Palchak a call and he’ll give you the recipe. “The formulas are public,” he said. “It’s a public university, so technically, they belong to the public.”
Although you’ll have to travel to State College or order by mail to sample the Creamery’s wares, we do have one local import from the town—Center City restaurant the Pita Pit.
Meet the man behind good taste at Penn State [Inquirer]
[Photo via Nabil K. Mark / AP]
