Ice cream in bulk

A gift tip for someone you love is to give away an experience, hopefully you get to come along. This Christmas I received an ice cream and chocolate tasting in my Santa's sack, so one dark January evening I took Mr Rendahl by the arm and we headed off to the ice cream masters of Värmland at the Carli Chocolate.

The tasting began with a sample form worthy of any wine tasting. Certainly no grapes, but appearance, flavour and texture were to be examined.

We started with the ice cream and were first warned not to eat too much ice cream, it could affect the taste buds for the chocolate. Too much ice cream, we thought, that's not possible, so we munched away. While we were eating ice cream, we got some mixed facts about ice cream and ice cream production. For example, do you know how much ice cream we Swedes actually eat every year? In 1950, we ate a paltry half-litre per person per year, while the peak year of 1983 saw Swedes' consumption reach 14.7 litres. Since then, consumption has declined and in 2021, 8.1 litres of ice cream were eaten. However, I think Rendahls eat a little more than that. 🙂

If you're worried about your waistline and prefer to eat sorbet, I can tell you that this is an unfinished project: sorbet contains less fat than ice cream, but almost three times as much sugar. Incidentally, Italian gelato is not very fat either. While regular ice cream contains about 20 % of fat, gelato contains only about 7 % of fat.

As an ice cream conservative, it was fun to try flavours that we had never tried before and that we might not normally buy. I would normally be sceptical of an ice cream with spirulina, but together with coconut and passion fruit it was a super combo. The vegan "fake chocolate" had an incredibly chocolatey flavour for not being chocolate, but I still prefer the original. Therefore, the ending with Carli's classic Italian chocolate was still the best.

After the ice cream, we moved on to the chocolate tasting. Here we got to try a variety of their different types of chocolate that they use in their production. It ranged from a really dark chocolate with 88 % cocoa content to the much milder Caramelito with a cocoa content of only 36 %. We also learnt about the incredible amount of work that goes into producing cocoa. For example, only one cocoa bean ripens at a time on the cocoa plant, so the harvest is done by hand after the beans ripen. This is then just step one of nine in the process of becoming the chocolate we eat.

The evening ended with us walking up to the ice cream counter and trying our way through the entire range. Here we took the chance to taste everything from the children's ice cream with donut flavour to the fine pistachio ice cream. We also took the opportunity to stock up on chocolate at home, as the cupboards should never be empty.

We were offered a pleasant and personalised tasting with exciting facts interspersed with delicious ice cream and chocolate. A perfect way to brighten up a dark January evening. Are you one of those people who don't eat ice cream in the middle of winter? Try it! A yummy scoop of ice cream with a warming cup of coffee works all year round. A bit like Carli's own motto: "Every day is a good day for Carli Gelato."