It’s National Vanilla Ice Cream Day, one of the most popular, and underappreciated, ice cream flavors ever. Everyone wants all these bells and whistles in their ice cream these days, swirls of fudge, nuts, even popcorn pieces and Red Hots; and when they want a plain, unadorned flavor, most head to the prettiest girl at the ice cream social, chocolate, because hey, it’s chocolate. But vanilla has so many great properties to it, and it’s why I love the crap out of vanilla: it can be creamy and rich, so full of yummy dairy fat it melts like a full milkshake on your mouth. One of my favorite brands of vanilla ice cream is Breyers, because they use real vanilla beans in their ice cream that you can actually see and taste, those little black specks that indicate a natural, expensive, and wholly tasty ingredient was used to bring you this scoop of ice cream. It’s just the tiniest bit gritty on my tongue, something about the texture of real vanilla ice cream that makes me feel both satisfied and refreshed. And let’s not even talk about soft-serve: the right vanilla soft serve is like eating a cold vanilla cloud! Does anything bring back memories of childhood summers better than light, airy vanilla soft serve sitting atop a candy cone?
Whether enjoyed on its own or smothered in hot fudge, vanilla remains the nation's most popular flavor of ice cream, according to the International Dairy Foods Association. So if you love vanilla, get ready to celebrate - July 23 is National Vanilla Ice Cream Day.
Although no one has been credited with the invention of ice cream, we do know that its origins date as far back as the second century B.C. Today, ice cream is a more than $21 billion industry in the U.S.
Want the "scoop" on vanilla ice cream? Here are some fun facts:
12 pounds of milk is needed to make one gallon of ice cream.
Vanilla ice cream was served to immigrants arriving at Ellis Island as part of their "Welcome to America" meal.
Madagascar grows 80 percent of the vanilla beans used in ice cream production around the world.
The difference between French vanilla and traditional vanilla ice cream? French vanilla contains egg yolks, which is why it has a more yellow appearance than traditional vanilla.
