A Finger Lakes Ice Cream Challenge In Lodi, NY

The Idea

When we arrived in Lodi, NY at our great Airbnb for two weeks, I realized that we were *this* close to an ice cream shop – Village Soft Serve. It turns out it’s a family run business. Mariah, who was at our location, is the daughter of the owner of Village Soft Serve in nearby Ovid, NY. She helps her family out with the business while also doing amazing things in her own right. To learn more about her watch the interview with her in the final video below.

I wandered over to see what the options might be for our visit and I was stunned to see how many flavors and possible combination of flavors you could make. I decided that a trial of their wine ice cream was in order and while I was enjoying it I came up with a brilliant idea.

Yes, you can mix up to three flavors from their soft serve list making thousands of flavor options.

They also have hand-dipped flavors and a huge variety of ways to enjoy your ice cream.

While I’m known around here for loving all things donuts, ice cream is actually my favorite food. If I were ever told I could only eat one thing for the rest of my life, it would be chocolate fudge brownie (by Ben and Jerry’s if I’m really being choosy) ice cream and I’d live out the remainder of my days happy.

But, what if we did a challenge – March Madness-style with brackets for the ice cream. What if we let readers pick what we’d try and have an ultimate winner!? My budget guy (AKA Stephen) was very suspicious of this idea but I made it so it wouldn’t be too expensive. We’d only have 4 twists to try as they are $3.99 for a small (a very reasonable price for the amount you get, but eating ice cream every day for two weeks was going to stretch our budget) and we’d have “tinies” of the hand-dipped which is only $1.30.

With my budget guy on board, we went over to just have a little fun before the challenge officially began. I got a banana split, Truffles got a pup cup and Stephen tried the other wine ice cream flavor, Red Raspberry Chardonnay. For the record, both wine flavors were nice but subtle.

The “I Scream for Ice Cream” Challenge

We asked you, our readers, to join in the fun by going to our Facebook group and helping choose flavors for us to try and to submit twist list flavor combinations. Anyone who participated in the challenge was entered to win a gift card for ice cream. The challenge started by having readers choose which 8 of the 12 hand-dipped flavors they’d like to see us try.

Round 1

This created the basis for our bracket’s first round.

Here’s a video of us trying those first eight flavors:

Everything was going great until we hit a snag. We were given over 30 different flavor combinations from the twist list to try. How would we a) just pick four and b) agree on what they were? I love chocolate, hand-dips and strong flavors while Stephen prefers soft serve and fruit-based flavors and they don’t have to be as strong for him.

Well, well, well… Guess who decided after Round 1 that he’d like his own bracket!! THE BUDGET GUY! This is how the conversation ended up going:

Me: Well you’re doubling your ice cream budget that way.
Him: Well we can just try the new ones.
Me: Oh, no! If we’re doing it, we’re doing it right and buying the flavors over again for each new day.
Him: Ok.
Me: So you’re buying more ice cream.
Him: Yes.

And so there you have it! Our 2 brackets for the competition! 

We had different methods for choosing our twist flavors. Stephen just chose the four that sounded the best to him. I decided to try and give everyone a fair chance at being picked, so I had two randomly selected, one that I thought sounded the best but that I wouldn’t normally choose for myself and one that I made up myself.

If I were a kid and could mix 3 flavors what would I pick? I chose tutti fruiti, cake batter and cotton candy. Sadly, our friend Kathy’s choice of our worst three flavors combined didn’t make the competition – coffee (both), coconut (Shae) and peanut butter (Stephen).

And so started the quarter finals for the challenge. You can watch the video for each day below to see our thoughts and feelings about each flavor.

Round 2

• Stephen – Cotton candy (hand-dipped) vs s’mores, salted caramel & cheesecake (twist)
• Shae – Dark chocolate raspberry truffle (hand-dipped) vs banana, cake batter & chai tea (twist)

Round 3

• Stephen – Apple pie, salted caramel & cheesecake (twist) vs minty mint (hand-dipped)
• Shae – Tutti frutti, cotton candy & cake batter (twist) vs minty mint (hand-dipped)

We realized we didn’t need to buy two of the same tinies after this.

Round 4

• Stephen – Banana, brownie batter & Whitehouse cherry (twist) vs maple walnut (hand-dipped)
• Shae – Maple walnut (hand-dipped) vs brownie batter & s’mores (twist)

Round 5

• Stephen – Amaretto, German chocolate cake & black cherry (twist) vs sugar cookie (hand-dipped)
• Shae – Brownie batter, butterscotch & banana (twist) vs sugar cookie (hand-dipped)

Rounds 6 & 7

We ran off to NYC for the weekend, so the challenge resumed with the first of the semi-finals on Tuesday, August 15th and the second semi-final the next day. Both of the semi-finals are on the same video below.

Round 6

• Stephen – S’mores, salted caramel & cheesecake (twist) vs apple pie, salted caramel & cheesecake (twist)
• Shae – Dark chocolate raspberry truffle (hand-dipped) vs minty mint

Round 7

• Stephen – Maple walnut (hand-dipped) vs sugar cookie (hand-dipped)
• Shae – Brownie batter & s’mores (twist) vs sugar cookie (hand-dipped

Round 8 – The Final

Finally were were down to just two flavors each. For me, Dark Chocolate Raspberry Truffle (hand-dipped) against Brownie Batter S’mores (twist) and for Stephen, Maple Walnut (hand-dipped) against Apple Pie, Salted Caramel, Cheesecake (twist).

The winners are…

Then we had to decide which was the top flavor of them all. Ultimately, if we were going to share just one one, we decided it would be Dark Chocolate Raspberry Truffle. My friend, Brittany, said from the beginning she thought that would be the winner because it combined all our best things – chocolate for me, fruit for Stephen and TRUFFLES!

But, those weren’t the only winners. We still had to pick a name to win a gift card for ice cream from our participants. Normally, when we have a prize available (we’ve given away Hilton Gold Status in the group for a few years), Truffles picks the winner. I write out the names, take pictures of all the names, throw them into a bowl, mix them, place them out so I don’t know who is where, then we put the same size treats on all the papers and Truffles is spun in the middle (gently) and goes for the first treat and that one’s the winner, then I open all the papers so everyone can see their name was in the draw. I still wanted her to pick but based on our general workload and the number of participants I simplified it this time around and just used “the wheel of names” randomizer.

Truffles choosing the winner this time around.

Jessica won the drawing while Beth and Brittany got honorable mentions and prizes for choosing our final winning flavors.

Ultimately, I think that the true winners were us. We got to enjoy delicious ice cream (and fun content), I got to know Mariah (which is part of what the road trip is all about) AND she made Truffles (and other pups that come to the shop) a bandana. It was tucked under the wipers the morning we headed out, so we took Truffles to model it for everyone.

You can find The Village Soft Serve in Lodi, NY and it’s open from around Mother’s Day through Labor Day and their Ovid, NY location stays open through September.