Has Cool Inside got your back or what? With the temperature soaring to the high 80s, we pay a visit to a shop where the ice cream is made on-premises, just as it’s been for the past 22 years.
What is it called?
Today we feature a Pralines and Cream ice cream cone.
Where is it sold?
Ryan’s Homemade Ice Cream
462 Shrewsbury Avenue
Tinton Falls NJ 07702
732.842.5874
The business was a Carvel franchise owned by Edward Ryan and a partner from 1968 until 1988. That’s when Peter Ryan and his wife, Elizabeth, took over. Peter bought out his brother Teddy’s interest in 1990.
Peter, 54, makes all the ice cream himself, plus Italian ices, sherbet, frozen yogurt and ice cream cakes. The business is open year-round, with more than three-dozen flavors (Pistacchio Bordeaux Cherry, anyone?) always available, and specialty flavors in season. Next month, for example, peach lovers won’t want to miss the ice cream that Peter makes from the 50 pounds of Jersey peaches Elizabeth will pick at Eastmont Orchards in Colts Neck and blanch in her kitchen in Tinton Falls. But that stuff won’t last!
“People have been asking for the past two months, ‘When’s the peach coming in?’ ” Peter says.
Price?
A small cone or cup with hard ice cream is $4; medium, $5 and large, $5.50.
What’s in it?
Peter makes all the ice cream with a flavorless, 14-percent mix from a dairy and builds on that with whatever flavoring is required. In this case, that’s a praline — a sugar- or caramel-covered pecan candy that’s popular in the South.
His recipes are all in his head and secret, Ryan says, but this one has vanilla ice cream with caramel swirled in and pralines supplied by Panza, which caters to the ice cream industry.
“It’s the ingredients you use that are going to bring people back,” he says. “I could use cheap chocolate chips, for example, but I use soft-chunk chocolate chips.”
Fill in the blank with the first word that comes to mind:
If this product didn’t exist, life would be: “dull” (Peter) “boring.” (Elizabeth)
