Conspicuous Consumption (this time it’s a double entendre)

So, I found out today (via Cool Hunting) about eCreamery where, among other things, you can design and order custom ice cream.

It is ridiculously expensive–like $100 (US) for a gallon (perhaps easier to think of as $12.50 a pint), not including the FedEx price to get it to you (if you live in America).

So even though I will be in Boston next month, and could easily have some shipped to me there, I probably won’t order any–I’d feel rather too much guilt paying what could feed some families for so long for ice cream. Besides, I don’t need 8 pints of any kind of ice cream from a waistline perspective, and I certainly don’t need them at that price.

But, it sure is fun to play with their flavour designer and think about the choices.

If I were going to do this, for example, the batch I would order up would probably start with the 14% milk fat base (more fat==more flavour, it’s sad but true), and have base flavours of “black raspberry” (which I hope is what Americans call what I call a blackberry) and “Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla“. Into this mix I would swirl the raspberry ribbon, and I would finish off with “luscious peach chunks“.

Yum.

Or, you could try to make the least appealing flavour possible, with the 8% base infused with durian and hot pepper, and riddled with black sesame seeds and pop rocks.

Yarg.

In a little town near the city I grew up in, there was a place called The Funny Farm that had the low rent version of this–they had mixers and about 200 different ingredients, and you had them mix up whatever combination you wanted on a cone-by-cone basis. I’m sure the ingredients were a lot lower quality than eCreamery uses, but it was also $2 a cone so… Anyway, I’m pretty sure the Funny Farm has been gone for a decade or two now.