MALTBY – To help Snoqualmie Gourmet Ice Cream celebrate the first holiday season in its production plant and parlor, co-owner Barry Bettinger set out to make the “perfect” eggnog.
The result are new products -eggnog and ice cream of the same flavor – that may boost the Maltby company’s sales during the traditionally slower winter months.
“We’re pretty proud of it so far,” said Heather Fall, who helps run the company’s ice cream factory. She said several restaurants have ordered the new eggnog products.
Snoqualmie Gourmet Ice Cream already has an established a reputation for producing ultrapremium ice cream that’s sold in grocery stores, at restaurants and in its own parlor.
But before moving from a cramped space in Lynnwood this summer, the company was somewhat limited in its experimentation with flavors and products. It lacked the facilities to blend its own mix, the core ingredients for an ice cream flavor.
That’s not a problem in the new environmentally friendly ice cream factory in Maltby.
“We can run so many things,” said Bettinger, who co-owns Snoqualmie Gourmet Ice Cream with his wife, Shahnaz.
In addition to making mixes for its own products, the new facility also produces and sells mixes for shakes and other dairy treats to restaurants and other wholesale customers.
While it’s much easier to experiment with a batch of new ice cream, Fall said there are enough ingredients and work involved that there’s at least one practical consideration that goes into going ahead with a new flavor: “As long as we’re pretty certain it will be a good seller.”
The eggnog, which has a kick of combined rum, brandy and bourbon, is selling well since its introduction earlier this month, Bettinger said. The all-natural beverage has a thinner consistency than other eggnogs sold in stores, because those mixtures usually use artificial gum and stabilizers.
Bettinger said it took some time to come up with a recipe he liked, “with all the nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves and ginger, and trying to get the right mixture of all three alcohols.”
One of the best things about the result is that the aftertaste of so many commercially sold eggnogs is missing from this one, he said. He discovered that pasteurizing the eggnog mix longer at a slightly lower temperature helped eliminate that.
Snoqualmie Gourmet also annually rolls out special holiday ice cream flavors. This year include pumpkin, rum raisin, cinnamon and cranberry ice creams. Fall said rum raisin has been selling particularly well, which means she’s doing the tricky task more often of soaking raisins in alcohol for just the right amount of time.
Bettinger said this year’s move to the Maltby plant, which can produce 3,000 to 5,000 pints of ice cream a day – up from 1,500 or fewer in Lynnwood – was timed well. Compared to 2004, the company’s sales have been up by 50 percent this year.
Reporter Eric Fetters: 425-339-3453 or fetters@heraldnet.com.
Snoqualmie Gourmet Ice Cream
The ice cream parlor is at 21106 86th Ave. SE in Maltby and is open to the public from 6:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday and noon to 6 p.m. on Sunday, with live music on Friday nights. For more information, call 360-668-8535.
Kevin Nortz / The Herald
Snoqualmie Gourmet Ice Cream in Maltby is celebrating its first holiday season.
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