Clockwise from top: Salted Caramel, Avocado and Rocky Road Iced Cream

MANILA, Philippines — What does it take to make the perfect scoop of ice cream – that silky smooth scoop that just melts on the tongue like butter and makes you moan and slap the desk on the first taste? One such brand, Carmen's Best Ice Cream, did exactly that, and according to owner Francisco “Paco” Magsaysay, all it takes is using the best and freshest ingredients available and oh, a lot of hardworking cows!

Hardworking cows?! Why, of course! Indeed, what is ice cream if not a dairy product that truly does depend on the quality of the main ingredients: milk and cream?

Paco counts himself lucky that his father, former senator Jun Magsaysay, has a dairy farm. That enables Paco to get milk and cream straight from the source, undiluted and in pristine condition. According to Paco, he is now one of the farm's biggest customers. Each batch of cream that he uses for Carmen's Best Ice Cream comes from 20 liters of milk. The milk is then sold under the name “Holly's Milk” for the Holstein cows from which they came.

The milk and cream that Paco uses in his products have become his main secret weapons. “I don't mind sharing my recipes,” he says. “You can copy everything, but you won't get the same results if you don't have the same cream that I use. That's the one that makes all the difference!” Having tasted it in the past (and eager to taste it again), we can only nod in agreement.

Looking around his home, we spy a few of Paco's trophies, honoring him as one of the best cable operators. Now, how exactly did Paco, a cable operator, get involved in ice cream making? “Yeah, it's a bit strange,” he laughs. “But I started out by helping my dad manage the farm and thinking of other dairy products that we could make. We thought of the usual things, like cheese, but I thought, 'Nge, corny naman,'” he shares. “And then I thought, 'Hmm, ice cream kaya? I like ice cream. Everyone likes ice cream.'”

It seems that everyone likes HIS ice cream, in particular. In the last few months, Carmen's Best Ice Cream has received numerous honors, being called the best artisanal ice cream in various taste tests. It looks like those cable operator awards will have to share the space soon. Not bad for a company that only started in 2009.

Of course, having excellent cream is not enough to make great ice cream, so Paco enlisted the help of a few books like David Lebovitz's “The Perfect Scoop” and “Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book” and ingredients like Swiss chocolate, Horlicks Malted Milk Powder, Tantamco Ube Jam and fresh, organic fruits in season. After some time churning in Paco's Nemox ice cream machines, the ice cream created becomes greater than the sum of its parts. He says, “I have no culinary training, but I love to eat.”

In fact, the first flavors that he worked on were the ones that he liked. “I don't really like to experiment with unusual flavors. I prefer the classic ones, like chocolate, because I already know that they're good,” he says. His own kids became his guinea pigs, testing out possible new flavors and giving him feedback.

Soon, word spread about Paco's small ice cream company. People started ordering in bulk to serve his ice cream at parties or to be given as gifts. Since Paco does not have a permanent stall, he takes orders by phone and asks his customers to pick up the ice cream, originally, only at his home in Alabang and then later, in Makati and San Juan, as his list of clientele grew.

It's not very difficult to see why his clientele grew exponentially. Many have said that memory is a powerful thing in food and Paco has ways of inducing memories when people try his products. We are not immune to this. Today, we try his avocado ice cream and we are suddenly transported back to our childhood afternoons spent eating avocado slices with evaporated milk and sugar! Only this time, the concoction is smoother and creamier. It's uncanny how the taste is just of avocado and not vanilla. “The secret is making sweet cream ice cream as a base”, says Paco. “It has no vanilla, so you only get the taste of the ingredients you add.” The usual bright green color that one finds in avocado ice cream is absent in Carmen's Best Ice Cream. Instead, the ice cream is pale green, almost grey. That's because Paco does not believe in using food coloring. He prefers to let the ingredients speak for themselves.

We try the salted caramel next. It's something that we have already tried in the past, but again, it reminds us of that first bite of Pierre Hermé's salted caramel macaron. Butter pecan reminds us of Poppycock and gives us the idea of eating Poppycock with milk, like cereal. Then again, we could just eat more butter pecan ice cream. The chocolate malted milk, made with Horlicks, becomes our favorite as soon as we taste it, though. Not too sweet and with bits of Horlicks, it makes us yearn for the days when we used to pretend that Horlicks pellets were pills and we were adults taking adult medication, complete with the cotton in the bottle. Unfortunately for the chocolate malted milk ice cream, its very short reign as our favorite comes to a screeching halt the moment that the rum raisin ice cream touches our lips. Now, an evil Secret Santa gave us a box of raisins for Christmas (might as well have been a lump of coal) when we were five years old, we've always hated raisins with a passion. Kudos to Carmen's Best for making us love it in their ice cream. Perhaps it was the Jamaican rum talking, but soon, we were telling everyone who would listen that we love the ice cream, we love them and therefore, they should taste the ice cream. Just a taste! We want more for ourselves. Yes, great ice cream does make people lose their minds.

Right now, one can only get Carmen's Best Ice Cream by ordering it from Paco. Sometimes, when there is a shortage of cream, there might be delays, but when one buys something because of its quality, delays can be forgiven, says Paco. While a lot of people eat ice cream as an indulgence, digging into a pint of Carmen's Best means helping farmers, too, and as the text on the label will tell you, Carmen's Best donates part of their profit to the PGH Medical Foundation Inc. Paco says it's important to emphasize corporate social responsibility, even in small companies. Cows and corporate social responsibility? Not too shabby! The high quality of their product and their desire to share and inspire truly makes eating Carmen's Best Ice Cream a guilt-free indulgence.

For details on available flavors and how to order, visit Carmen’s Best Ice Cream’s website on http://carmensbest.com/ and their Facebook page on http://www.facebook.com/CarmensBest. Call 809-2042 to arrange your order. Pick up points are in Makati, San Juan and Alabang.