For a town of its size, State College (also known as Happy Valley) is lucky enough to have at least 2 destination culinary landmarks. Located in the Food Sciences building and open continuously since the late 1800’s, the Penn State Creamery has been providing central Pennsylvania with enough milk, cheese and Ice Cream to fill Beaver Stadium to the brim. A combination retail store and training facility, it’s quite simply the most famous program for the study of Ice Cream production in the country. As an example, both Ben and Jerry are graduates of the Penn State ice cream program — more popularly known as Agriculture 5150.
It seems that, due to popularity, the Penn State creamery has recently moved into a new larger store. That’s probably a good thing, as I’m sure they serve up tens of thousands of scoops of Ice Cream on a football Saturday. And I’m not talking a regular-sized scoop. In fact, a scoop of Ice Cream is so large that it is only matched in shear enormity by the mass delusion of Penn State football fans.
Clean and bright, friendly and affordable, the Creamery features standards like Vanilla and Butter Pecan, more exotic flavors like Bittersweet Mint and Peanut Butter Swirl, and the Moby Dick to my Ahab — the Peachy Paterno.
I’ve got to admit that after hearing about this Ice Cream from Penn State alums, it was a little disappointing. The Peachy Paterno is good, but doesn’t really taste like Peaches. It’s basically a premium Vanilla Ice Cream with standard sliced, frozen peaches studding the Ice Cream. Don’t get me wrong — this is world-class Ice Cream — better than you can get at any store in the country. But, it’s probably not as good, or as creative as the Cornell Dairy. But, more importantly, now that I’ve tried both the Peachy Paterno and the Sticky Buns, I never have to go back to Happy Valley, unless its to watch the semi-annual beatdown that the Ohio State football team gives the Nittany Lions.
Tags: Ice Cream
