Milk from heritage cows and historic Grasmere Gingerbread® is combined to create tasty treat for tourists
USING milk from pedigree Jersey cows that may be traced back to the original breed in 1763, Abbott Lodge near Penrith has created an exclusive ice cream for Grasmere Gingerbread® that was established in 1854.
Sold outside The Grasmere Gingerbread Shop, the tasty treat combines the famous Abbott Lodge Just Jersey milk and pieces of Grasmere Gingerbread® and crumbs.
“It’s a delicious combination and a great example of two well-known Cumbrian family businesses working together,” said Claire Bland, a partner in Abbott Lodge.
The ice cream – sold in tubs or on cones – is proving exceptionally popular with visitors to The Grasmere Gingerbread Shop.
“People absolutely love it,” said Yasmine Hunter, Sales and Marketing Manager at Grasmere Gingerbread®.
“As soon as the sun shines people are queuing up to buy it.”
It is the latest winning ice cream from Abbott Lodge that is one of the area’s most popular visitor attractions.
The farm makes over 30 flavours of ice cream – all in-house – from their own fresh Jersey milk.
Claire and husband Steven established the Jersey herd in 2002 and now milk 170 cows. Their son Robert and daughter Elizabeth are also integral to the business.
Pampered and loved, when the cows are inside they are able to lie down on comfortable foam mattresses and activate massages from a special spinning brush.
A robotic milking station even enables the animals to choose when they wish to be milked.
Jersey milk is one of the most digestible for people to drink and the most efficient convertor of grass to protein in the world.
On a farm that in recent years has benefitted from newly-planted hedgerows and trees, a specially-created wetland habitat and restored dry stone walls, environmental sustainability is key.
“We do not have food miles, we have food steps as the cows wander directly from the fields and sheds into the milking parlour,” explained Claire.
The Times newspaper voted Abbott Lodge ice cream as one of the Top Twenty made in the UK.
Abbott Lodge is popular with families. Visitors can watch the milk production on a special cow cam and a viewing window in the tearoom overlooks the ice cream making process.
An outdoor adventure playground even includes faux Jersey cows.
