Since my last trip to Rota Spring Farm in Sterling was just over a month ago, I probably shouldn’t write it up this time around. However, my nephew Tommy was in town this weekend and I had long promised that I would take him here when he wasn’t  in Chicago and it was open. That long promise isn’t quite so long since he does only turn four this month.

With our current extended daylight savings hours, by the time I got to my parents’ house, thing were already getting dark, and after rallying the troops, it was a night drive. Luckily, we left in time as Rota’s fall hours are reduced from their regular schedule and things there are now closing at 8p. (Daily 11:30a-8p from September 27 until closing in mid-November)

While Tommy has yet to get adventurous with his flavor selections, he liked the chocolate ice cream as much as he liked the goats behind the stand. The real beacon on the menu board was the return of Indian Pudding and Pumpkin. While I could indulge myself in gallons of Indian pudding alone, I paired the two scoops on a single sugar cone.

The pumpkin as the top scoop was a refreshing flavor that wasn’t as dominated by nutmeg and allspice as this flavor often is, instead allowing the fruit itself to carry much of the taste. The bottom scoop was thus left to Indian pudding, and the first taste of that sent me back into a spiral of bliss. I may have eaten hundreds of scoops of ice cream since we started this blog, but if I had to do a desert island selection, this would be my first choice. The molasses and corn meal and spices are in a near perfect solution here. With strong flavors, a divine taste, and the creamy freshness that only comes from nearby cows, this is why I eat ice cream.

For most people, Sterling is out of the loop. Some things are worth the extra effort. Despite the fact that my exhortations may make it more difficult for me to fill up on quarts on the last day of the season, I implore you to make this a road trip destination. If you are a real fan of ice cream, you owe it to yourself to get out here before things close up for the winter. If you don’t make it, I’m going to give the same proclamation on their opening weekend.

Other trips here: http://weallscreamforicecream.wordpress.com/2009/03/14/sprung-rota-spring-farm-sterling-ma/

http://weallscreamforicecream.wordpress.com/2008/06/28/rota-spring-farm-sterling-ma/

Cone – kiddie $2.43 small $3.10 large $4.05

Sundae – 1scoop $3.81 2scoop $4.52 3scoop $5.24

Frappe $4.05 extra thick $4.52

Rota Spring Farm

117 Chace Hill Road, Sterling MA 01564

978-365-9710

Open from March to mid-November

Open daily from 11:30a-9:30p

http://rotaspringfarm.com

At first glance, this seems like an annex for Lambert’s next door. I mean it is a grocery store that’s already got a tent on the front that’s filled with outdoor Halloween decorations, but the array of picnic tables in the front of this shoppe are a good sign that there is something more going on here. After scanning through the flavor list, I had a Mudslide cone and my brother Tim went with a bowl of Green Tea.

Steve Cirame is more well known as the founder of Christina’s in Inman Square, but he gave up that throne a long while ago. Boston Ice Cream Factory is where he holds down the fort and provides the ice cream base for many of your favorite scoops in Cambridge. With the metal hut roof on this location, it’s completely unassuming, but one look at the menu board makes even the most casual ice cream eater quickly realize that something is afoot.

The shoppe is crammed with old freezers. Some of them are plugged in and facing the patrons and have samples of ice cream cakes. Some of them are unplugged and look like they might not get cold when they next are plugged in without first making an extended trip to the repair shop. It’s really a confusing layout, with only a few tables running parallel to the front windows and the rest of the area filled with miscellaneous stuff that looks as though this shoppe has swallowed the leftovers from every ice cream spot in the city that has gone out of business in the last two decades.

While the ice cream menu here offers up green tea and Marble Crunch along with a full complement of regular options, it’s the specialty flavors that are all infused with alcohol that are most notable (even if they do cost an extra quarter per scoop). Where else can you find Sex on the Beach at an ice cream shoppe? Bananas Foster? Barbados Breeze? The only thing that might have been better is if they actually had all of the flavors listed as I didn’t get to try the Guiness Stout.

My first sample was of the Durian. Apparently it’s an Asian fruit whose stench is so bad that it is banned from mass transit in Singapore. It’s described as a custardy fruit with hints of almond, papaya, and onion. The description was apt and it required a taste, but I can’t imagine it working as a whole cone. While I was navigating to figure out what options were in stock, Tim got green tea and my spoonful was nice with the subtle hints of the tea making a clean ice cream. I tried the Rum Raisin, but the rum flavor seemed to be in the fruit and not the ice cream, so I decided on the Mudslide. The combination of Bailey’s, Kahlua, and vodka made this a potent frozable, though the texture was remarkably soft. This was the sort of ice cream that bars ought to keep in stock… I was fantasizing about having this scoop as the topper of a beer float.

We meandered North along the coast since there wasn’t anything else to do until Mad Men, so Tim and I wound up wandering around Castle Island. Like most places in Boston the name is vestigial from a time before landfill gave the city the mass it now has. Watching planes fly into the fog and disappear above us was fun, but we didn’t try to circle all of Pleasure Bay since neither of us were sure whether we could actually take the path all of the way around.

Cone – small $2.75 medium $3.80 large $4.75

Sundae – small $4.95 large $5.95

Frappe $4.75 xtra thick $5.95

Boston Ice Cream Factory

777 William T Morrissey # A, Dorchester, MA 02122-3331

617 436-2189

Open year round

Daily noon-9p, til 7p October-March

Boston Ice Cream Factory online

A rainy Sunday scrapped my plans. I guess the fact that it was raining like this meant that moving the Bolton Fair to mid-August had been prescient, even if it still seems sacrilegious to traditionalists. I was supposed to go to Cape Ann with a high school friend that I usually meet up with at the Fair, but instead my brother Tim and I went the other direction and found a Maple Walnut cone and an Apple n’ Spice cone with Heath mix-ins.

Opened in June of 1976, the Ice Creamsmith has been serving scoops to the Dorchester Lower Mills village for over thirty years. David Mabel and his wife Robyn have been keeping this place open from March 1 until Thanksgiving every year since. Located right by the old mill buildings on the Neponset River, their name comes from a riff on the tradesmen that used to work the area. Sure making ice cream isn’t the same as pounding iron ore, but blacksmith and ice creamsmith both do the work for you.

While the walls of the shop are covered with ice cream related comics and articles on the shop itself, the storefront itself is pretty tiny with only ten seats and a single bench out on the sidewalk. It’s interesting to wander in areas like this that have been undergoing a real revitalization. Those mill buildings aren’t abandoned shells, but instead have been converted mostly into condominiums, and with a Milton train stop just across the river, there is easy access to the entire city.

The menu is really simple with ten basic flavors, three seasonal specials and a single yogurt and sorbet selection each. There aren’t any weirdly named flavors, but what they do here is keep their ice cream relatively soft since much of their business is based on the mix-ins that they provide. While Steve Herrell may have developed the idea for the mix-in back in 1973, the Ice Creamsmith has been doing it longer consecutively than anyone. As a result, some statistician calculated that there are 2112 flavors available here, though I’m not sure what happens to those permutations when people want multiple mix-ins in a single scoop.

I tasted the Indian Pudding first, and then opted for the maple walnut instead. The maple sugars were rich and powerful and compelled me to get this and the pieces of nuts were all still crunchy. The ice cream was soft and creamy (all the ice cream is made here in five gallon batches using Hood’s ice cream mix), and with nuts already hanging in solution, I didn’t need to add another mix-in. Tim made a surprisingly good selection putting Heath into his apple ‘n spice – I had a spoonful just to make sure.

This place is about as far south as you can get and still technically be in Boston. It’s kind of amazing the amount of territory that the city swallowed up, and it makes it even more astounding that Brookline was the lone hold out. This is an area that I know very little about, so it was nice that Tim had found this place while tutoring nearby and thus was able to drive here without our needing to triple check maps on the way.

Cone – junior $2.24 small $3.57 large $4.76

Sundae – junior $4 small $5.33 large $6.52

Frappe $5 malted $5.57 extra scoop $7.24

The Ice Creamsmith

2295 Dorchester Ave, Dorchester Lower Mills, MA 02124

617 296-8567

Open March 1-Thanksgiving

Daily noon-10p

http://www.theicecreamsmith.com/

I woke up this morning way too early because I was supposed to cover for a radio show and the DJ before me called in sick. After figuring my way in and doing the show, I still had a few hours to kill before I had to go to work. I couldn’t figure out what to eat until I found myself at the beach with a fresh tub of Pistachio ice cream in front of me.

From the outside, it’s tough to determine much of anything about this art deco building that houses Twist & Shake. The traditional 50s malt shop vibe is thrown before you even go inside due to the fact that the menu seems to have been tagged on the outside of the building by an overly helpful graffiti artist. Inside it does bring you back to a classic beachside ice cream stand with a few tables for those afraid of getting the sand blown into their cone.

Sheryl and Mark Queen own this store and its sister in Winthrop. Here on the beach, they close the doors for the year in October, but their second shoppe in Winthrop stays open year round. While the two of them proudly proclaim that they have completed Penn State’s Ice Cream Short Course, they make most use of that in scooping techniques and mixing in soft serve flavors, because the ice cream they serve here comes from Richardson’s.

On the first day of Fall, the beach has only a few stragglers trying to catch rays despite the day’s humidity. Hopefully the weekends still keep things a bit active here, but it seems as though other nearby ice cream joints are already boarded up for the season. The lack of competition helps keep things from being silent, but as soon as the leaves start landing on the sidewalks, even this might seem like a boom.

I started with a sample of the apple crisp, but found again that the crisp part of the equation was missing. Instead I opted for pistachio to fill my sugar cone. The nut flavor was nice within the light green ice cream, but the nuts had already begun to soften within the mixture. The ice cream itself had the consistent quality that Richardson’s is known for, with a smooth and easy ice cream presenting itself quite simply. While this isn’t worth the trip alone, if you’re on the beach this is going to fill any craving just fine.

One of my favorite things about shoppes like this is the glass front on the case with the tubs of ice cream. Looking in can give you a good idea as to what is fresh or what is riddled with ice crystals already. When something is down to its last scoop, you really need to want that flavor badly. My decision today for the pistachio was made almost entirely because the scoop had been pulled across the top of this flavor only once, most of the top was still in pristine untouched condition.

Cone – kiddie $2.50 small $3.50 large $4.25

Sundae –kiddie $3.50 small $4.50 large $5.50

Frappe $4.75

Twist & Shake

82 Revere Beach Blvd, Revere, MA 02151-3640

781 286-2900

Open April-October 15; Winthrop store open year round

Hours ?a-?p

http://www.twistnshake.com/

I‘m not sure what the parameters are that allow ice cream shoppes to proclaim ‘homemade’ ice cream. I was searching around Melrose, but it seemed that every location served ice cream that was ‘homemade’ by Richardson’s in Middletown. Soc’s makes thing clear when it says “made on the premises,” so I got a Reverse Chocolate Chip cone.

Despite the way this place sounds when you say the name out loud, I couldn’t find any baseball iconography anywhere around the stand. It turns out that instead of being named for our red stockinged nine, this place was actually named for the original owner who went by the name Socrates. In 1989, Soc’s was bought by the Calakoutis family and has been in their control since.

The ice cream stand is located on the Lynn Fells Parkway just into Saugus, right now there’s a hideous bit of road construction going on, but as soon as you start to get frustrated, there is Soc’s. It’s a roadside stand that’s separated from the road by an ugly chain link fence, but once you turn into the lot all you see are smiling faces. There’s an inside area with a few booths, but most people were out under the trees where the picnic tables are stuffed as thick as can be. During the winter when the ice cream is gone, they keep things going by using this area to sell Christmas trees.

With two windows open and a short line, this seemed like it was going to be easy. However, the line to my left took a turn for the treacherous when the dad unfolded a piece of paper from his pocket with an extensive to go order, and to the right was a girl who worked at the shop who was treating all of her friends to her employee discount. After some extended mindless banter, I finally got to the window and had a sample of the Smores ice cream. With improper punctuation (S’mores would be proper) and whole mini marshmallows in the mix, I wasn’t so impressed.

I wound up with a reverse chocolate chip cone. Large chunks of white chocolate were held in the milky creamy chocolate ice cream. This was a clean and fresh cone, but there were two things about it that really made it stand out. My first bite seemed especially cold and I was expecting that as a result the ice cream was going to be extremely hard, but that assumption was wrong. Despite the cold, the ice cream had almost a soft-serve consistency, making this quick and easy and refreshing. I’m not sure what they do different in the process, but it oddly lived up to my expectations as I had initially thought that Soc’s was just a soft-serve joint.

Things were so calm and nice here that I forgot when I put my camera on the table to pick it back up. It wasn’t until I had left and was walking around Melrose looking for a sandwich that I realized my camera was gone. When I pulled back in the driveway, I saw the red light flicker on the table in the same place I left it. Most people were eating cones in their cars as dusk had finally passed, and no one had even noticed it sitting there. I picked it up and drove back toward a waiting gyro.

Cone – kids $2.85 small $3.35 medium $4 large $4.50

Sundae – small $4 medium $4.50 large $5 super $9

Frappe $4.29 extra thick $4.75

Soc’s Ice Cream

67 Lynn Fells Pkwy, Saugus, MA 01906-4421

781 233-0009

Open April – late October/early November

Hours 11a-11p ?

http://socsicecream.com/

After playing softball in the rain and mud, my desire to adventure around the state for ice cream was low. A nap raised my spirits a bit and I decided to get out of my house before it was too late. I wound up at this place that I had spied a few weeks ago and got myself a Peanut Butter cone.

Nelson’s is right in the heart of Winchester Center. If you took a train to get here, all you would need to do would be walk down from the raised tracks and this would be right in front of you. It’s open early and late, and even right before closing time they seem wholly willing to fire up the grill for the smallest of orders.

With very limited information on the internet, it seems as though this place may have recently changed ownership, if not the name itself. The corner location right on the rotary in the center of town makes it an immediate landmark and a quest for quality ingredients is helpful as well. What is weird is that the only thing in the bakery that doesn’t appear fresh are the baked goods, but that likely has as much to do with me arriving at the end of the day as anything.

Nelson’s Bakery doesn’t make their own ice cream, but what is significant is that this is the only scoop shop that I have found that is supplied by Puritan Ice Cream in Roslindale. Most of Puritan’s supply goes into restaurants and other locations where the maker is wholly obfuscated, but the owner here told me that he was friends with them and thus he uses their ice cream and they are willing to let him.

I sampled both the peanut butter and the rum raisin ice cream. The rum raisin needed more rum for my palate, so I opted for the peanut butter, which was really a peanut butter cup more than anything. A creamy milk chocolate ice cream, this had a dense swirl of peanut butter and candies in the mix. Peanut butter in ice cream can get really heavy, and this was, but only a chilly September night, this is the sort of thing that can be just right.

As nice as it was to get a cone, the sandwiches here are ridiculous. I wasn’t sure that I was up for one, but when I saw this on the menu, it seemed imperative: “Grilled chicken, prosciutto, grilled portabella mushrooms, artichoke hearts & capers.” If you think that sounds decadent and delicious, you need to go try one because it is even better than you imagine.

Cone – small $2.75 medium $3.25 large $3.95

Sundae – regular $4.25 large $5 special $6.25

Frappe $4.25 extra thick $4.75

Nelson’s Bakery

2 Mount Vernon St, Winchester, MA 01890-2704

781 729-8890

Open year round

Daily 9a-10p

http://nelsonsbakery.com

Sometimes you forget how bad rush hour traffic can be in the city. I kept readjusting my destination based on how bad things were moving. Instead of finding my way to soft serve in Saugus, I found a parking spot in City Square and decided to indulge myself with a Sorbet Trio after shelling out so much cash for my car this week.

Olives was Todd English’s first restaurant. Begun in 1989, it’s the one that launched him to celebrity status. This isn’t the original location, it moved down the street, and has expanded to locations in New York and Las Vegas. There are eight other restaurants that fall within English’s domain, so it’s rare to find him manning the brick oven here.

Located on the Freedom Trail, Olives is almost in the shadow of the Zakim Bridge. Actually if you look at maps of this area as late as the 1980s, you’d find what is now City Square mostly served as footing for pilings that held highways aloft. Now there’s a great little park with fountains and monuments, and thriving businesses nearby. This neighborhood is quite urbane, and the presence of a five-star restaurant certainly helps that outlook.

Now Olives is not a place most people think of when ice cream is the goal. With neo-Mediterranean cuisine, even the most regular patrons often think of the desserts as an afterthought. I opted for a seat at the bar since I was on my own, but they can accommodate groups of up to a dozen, though I would recommend making reservations. Attempting to not look too conspicuous, I started with a Woodford Reserve on the rocks and ordered their version of a bar pie – crispy duck, blue cheese and figs grilled on flatbread.

The dessert menu incorporated their homemade vanilla ice cream into a couple of the dishes, but it seemed as though the sorbet trio was most directly in my wheelhouse. Served in a martini glass with a sprig of mint, there were scoops of coconut lime, mango and cantaloupe sorbet, with a couple of thin biscotti to keep the palate clean. The coconut lime was very subtle with the two flavors both seemingly trying to step back and let the other take control; ultimately I had my biggest bite with the mint too and that united the flavors (the ice cream version of this at Jake’s was superior). The mango sorbet had the rich full color of the fruit, but the flavor was also tempered and lacked the textural unity that Coop’s had with the same flavor at the Somerville Showdown. The cantaloupe was what I was hoping for when I spent $9 on this dessert: sweet and delectable, with the fruit pieces and the sorbet combining in a way that it was tough to know which to give credit for which bursts of taste.

For as indulgent as this trip was, it was also one of the most fascinating conversations I’ve been involved with in ages. Being seated between a former basketball player and a gorgeous short single woman and her taller but taken friend led to some frank discussions that began when he realized that I actually had larger feet than he did. Even if you let your mind wander to its darkest corners, you might not approach the things that were spoken loudly. Despite all of that and her small stature, her honesty and pragmatism left me with the sort of smile that makes me hope I find her again on an ice cream run.

menu varies; Sorbet Trio $9

Olives

10 City Sq, Charlestown, MA 02129-3740

617 242-1999

Open year round

Monday-Friday: 5:30p-10p, Saturday 5p-10:30p, Sunday 5p-9p

http://www.toddenglish.com/

My good friend Noam grew up in Sharon, so every time I talked to him about this blog, he’d remind me that I needed to visit Crescent Ridge. On my way back from Fall River, I realized a side trip could be made without venturing too far out of the way. Cutting across Stoughton got me close and two guys in a parking lot pointed me to a Butter Pecan cone.

Crescent Ridge is known by most people as a dairy, not  an ice cream stand. If you live anywhere even remotely close, they are one of the few remaining places that will deliver milk in glass bottles to your door. My experiences with them had been finding their milk in various markets around the area, but knowing that they made their own milk had always left me excited at the prospect of their ice cream.

Since opening in 1932, the dairy has remained in the Parrish family. They recently opened another dairy bar in Holbrook as well, but this location is on the farm with the cows roaming the grasses behind the parking lot. They’ve got 31 flavors of ice cream and five frozen yogurt options available at all times at any point during the year. It was nice when I got close and merely asking people from the window of my car brought a smile to everyone’s face. I’d like to think they took their families out for a cone that night.

While the farm is on Bay Rd, the driveway access to the dairy bar is actually around the corner on East St. From there you can walk to the stand and order a cone and then come around to the back of the buildings where there are tables that edge the fence. There’s even an old tractor that was being occupied by kids waiting for their parents to finish up. A door on the left side of the bar opens to a store that is filled with milk, butter, and fresh packed pints and half-gallons.

A sample of the butter pecan made tasting anything else irrelevant. This ice cream tasted like it had just been frozen, with the pecans as fresh and crisp as any nut I’ve ever had held in a frozen solution. The cream was lighter and smoother than many farm fresh ice creams, it was almost as though it was made with their milks rather than with any heavy cream. Having a refreshing butter pecan whose scent lingers in my moustache but doesn’t stay heavy in my belly, is a genuine treat.

The only thing missing here was getting to go with Noam, but he lives out in Western Mass, so meeting up here is a bit of a challenge. Maybe we’ll plot sometime to come here and experience it together. I called him when I finished the cone and he was happy to learn that the quality of this ice cream was more than just youthful nostalgia. The best part is this is open all year round so we can make plans for some time in the middle of the winter if we want. I know I’ll be back.

Cone – mini-kiddie $3.75 small $4.25 large $4.75

Sundae – mini-kiddie $4.25 large $6.25

Frappe $5 extra thick $5.50

Crescent Ridge Dairy Bar

355 Bay Rd, Sharon, MA 02067-1399

781 784-2740

Open year round

Daily 11a-10p

http://www.crescentridge.com/

One thing that no one tells you when you get a new catalytic converter for your car is that you need to drive it for over a hundred miles and a bunch of starts before the computer resets and you can get a new inspection sticker. My impatience had been raging so I spun the dial and aimed toward Fall River. It was nearby that I scored a Cranberry Bog cone.

After a first stop in Fall River found Kone Head closed since February, I drove a bit west and landed here at Somerset Creamery. Begun in 1937 by Victor Spanick, the store remains in the family, and the Cape Cod location in Cataumet is run by his grandson. Other than a lapse while Spanick served in World War II, the creamery has been constantly in the business of providing ice cream to South Coast residents.

While they used to have three locations in the area, including the Milk Can which was a building in the shape of a milk bottle, but now all that remains is this spot on Lee’s River right before the Swansea line on Rt 6. The building looks as though it has recently had a serious facelift, with a new clean shop put on the front of the old creamery where they still make the ice cream. While there are lines directing customers through the store, there’s no inside seating, but outside provides some great vistas to the river that runs from behind the store all the way to the ocean.

The clean interior and pervasive smell of waffle cones is very inviting, and makes all of the flavors in their shop seem worthy of a taste. With recipes over seventy years old, it’s a pretty safe bet that most of these offerings are tried and true. A sign on the door proclaims that they’ll be closing around Columbus Day, depending on when the ice cream supply dwindles. My biggest dilemma came when I realized that since it’s now September that the special flavor is Indian Pudding.

I sampled the Indian pudding and swooned, but realized that since I was down here needed to at least sample the flavor that is exclusive to this place. After I did, I realized I could have more Indian pudding elsewhere, but the cranberry bog was necessary. A cranberry ice cream with sweetened cranberry halves (not craisins!), walnuts and chocolate chunks, a simple taste of this was enough to know it was special. The flavors collided with each other, but none dominated, and the ice cream itself had very subtle flavors and hues that allowed everything hanging in the mix to bring a lot to the table.

As you can see, there’s not a cone in that picture. I didn’t drop it or anything, I just ran out of batteries. I even switched them out for my primary back-up pair, but despite a recent recharging, they couldn’t get the camera on at all. When the drippings started to cover my hand, I threw in the towel and just ate it, then dug through my car for my emergency pair of non-rechargeables and snapped this shot that I had so well framed until the power died. Close your eyes and you can imagine the cone right there.

Cone – small $3.10 medium $3.70 large $4.20

Sundae – kids $3.40 regular $5

Frappe $3.95 extra-thick $4.60

Somerset Creamery

1931 Grand Army Hwy, Somerset, MA 02726-1206

508 672-5510

Open first weekend of Spring-Columbus Day

Sunday-Thursday noon-9:30p, Friday & Saturday noon-10p

http://www.somersetcreamery.com

Of all the locations that I’ve been to over the course of this blog, it’s this review that is the most visited. Sure, it’s in large part because they don’t have a website of their own (though they are on Facebook if you check the link at the bottom), but they also make soft-serve the right way. Today, I had a Creamsicle cone.

The ice cream stand was built in 1927 by farmer Charles Cahill, who owned a 250 acre dairy farm with over 100 head of cattle. He closed down around 1940, and in 1949 there was a fire that destroyed most of the abandoned buildings on the farm. After that two area high school teachers bought the dairy bar while the rest of the land became the King’s Grant neighborhood. In the early 1960s, the Maxwell family took over and brought fried foods to the stand, most notably the revered fried clams. Cedar Hill Dairy Joy is still in the family.

Unless you show up at the odd late afternoon hours that I stopped by today, odds are good that you’re going to be standing in line because this place is usually a glowing mecca until they close the windows. The grill here is as busy as the freezers with burgers being flipped and hot dog buns being warmed for lobster rolls. The food is good, but the best part of it is the near mandatory indulgence that follows.

On either side of the stand there is a bank of picnic tables, with the right side offering a bit of protection in cases of inclement weather. Around that is a parking lot that is often home to some creative parking spots since there aren’t any lines on the pavement. Ringing the parking lot are a few more picnic tables placed on a small grassy halo. As long as you like eating outside, your options are well covered.

I don’t know when I’ve stopped here and not got the Javaberry. The coffee and black raspberry swirl is a combination that fits ideally together. With a vanilla and chocolate swirl also an option, i picked the third choice, the creamsicle. A swirl of vanilla ice cream and orange sherbet, these two flavors are put into a nice balance side by side in a cone (no sugar cones available). While neither flavor is very bold in this mix, sometimes this combination works better like this when there is a bit of compromise at work instead of having the tart citrus and the creamy vanilla in a full war.

Thankfully, this wasn’t too far out of the way, heck it’s on the main path I take whenever I drive west. A weekend without a cone left me in a severe state of withdrawl. Hopefully my car will emerge safe and ready to venture across New England in search of more marvelous cones soon.

First Visit: http://weallscreamforicecream.wordpress.com/2008/07/24/cedar-hill-dairy-joy-weston-ma/

Cone – small $2.80 medium $3.75 large $5.37

Sundae – pixie $3.65 small $4.76 large $5.71

Frappe $4.62 extra thick $5.24 (add malt +$.50)

Cedar Hill Dairy Joy

331 North Ave, 117, Weston, MA 02493

(781) 894-7144

Open seasonally

Hours 11a-9p

Dairy Joy online