What Makes Vermont's Iconic Creemee Different From Soft Serve

If you find yourself in Vermont one day — perhaps on a lovely fall vacation, perhaps because you hitched a ride on a Ben & Jerry's truck and got a little carried away — you may discover that the ice cream parlors sell something called a "creemee." Is this some kind of strange, whimsical dessert concoction from the land of maple syrup and Bernie Sanders? Not really. Actually, it's just another word for soft-serve ice cream, albeit one with a different consistency from the Dairy Queens and Carvels of the world.

Even more than Philadelphia-style ice cream, creemees have air mixed into them, resulting in a divinely light-yet-creamy texture. This is only helped by the fact that they contain less milk fat than other kinds of ice cream (creemees contain between 3% and 6% as opposed to the 10% to 18% for most other kinds of ice cream). That, and the fact they're usually stored at a higher temperature. So what makes creemees different from soft-serve? The answer comes down to local milk, frequently sourced from Vermont's Kingdom Creamery, which provides the characteristic richness.

"So what?" you may be thinking to yourself. "I can get soft-serve ice cream right here in my own state without having to so much as lay eyes on a pair of Birkenstocks." Well, that may be true, but can you get a maple creemee there? We didn't think so. The maple creemee is Vermont's unofficial state dessert, as you might expect from the most prominent maple syrup-producing state in the union.

A maple creemee is simplicity itself. It's just milk and maple syrup mixed together into a velvety-smooth emulsion. But hey, bread and butter can feel like a gourmet experience so long as they're made with high-quality ingredients, and it's no different for a maple creemee. If you don't have much of a sweet tooth, you should probably avoid it (but you probably didn't need us to tell you that). If you're even a little bit curious, though, why not give it a try the next time you're in the Green Mountain State? It's not like you'll find many fast food chains to distract you in Vermont: You won't find any Popeye's there, to say nothing of Chick-Fil-A.