Staff photos by Chris Seward		 Zach Taylor pours the mix for chocolate chip cookie dough into the ice cream maker at the Maple View Farm Country Store on Rocky Ridge Road on Monday. He is the ice cream maker of the local frozen delight that is so popular, especially this time of year. The best part of his job? 'If you get hot, there's plenty of places you can go to cool off,' he said. Not to mention the sampling of the product -- for quality control, of course.
Getting His Licks In
Chapel Hill News, July 18, 2006

On the clock, in their own words.

On hot summer days like these, a sweet scoop of ice cream never tastes better.

Zach Taylor, 23, makes the ice cream at Maple View Farm. Taylor started working behind the counter at the farm's Country Store on Rocky Ridge Road after his sophomore year at UNC. After he graduated with a history degree in 2005, he took over ice cream-making duties full time.

He spoke with staff writer Lisa Hoppenjans about making summer's favorite treat.

"I had this job, and I didn't want to look for another one I guess.

"This job's not stressful, so it's pretty fun to do.

"If we're creating a new flavor, we kind of just test stuff out. ... We made gingersnap; I think it's going to be a flavor for October. ...We already make ginger ice cream, so we kind of pick and choose what we want to put in. We do put pieces of ginger in [the ginger ice cream], but we left those out and put cookies in instead.

"Me and a girl I used to work with, we came up with Peanut Butter Oreo. We found this pourable peanut butter, which works a lot better than just plain peanut butter ... It's a little bit softer.

"We made a lot of stuff with that.

"I made Skittles ice cream one time, but we didn't sell that up here. I just made that for myself. ... I thought the Skittles were going to be really hard, but they weren't bad.

"The only thing that I think that you can't put in ice cream directly is gummy bears, 'cause I know a lot of people who've told me they've broken teeth on gummy bears. They get really hard when you put them in ice cream.

"Anything gummy is not good for ice cream.

"At one time out front here we probably have about 20 or 23 [flavors], but all together we probably have 35 maybe that we've made.

"Once they get the milk and cream out of the cows, they actually mix it up in about a 280-gallon tank at the farm. They have to mix sugar and stabilizer and all this in together with the mix. ... Then they bring the tank up here and we pull [the mix] out of the tank and put it in 5-gallon buckets.

"We get white [base] mix, which we make vanilla and anything else like that with, and we also get a chocolate and a double chocolate mix.

"Anything that's hard in the ingredients we put in the machine first. Then we put in extracts, and then we pour the mix in on top of everything.

"It's basically just like a big homemade [ice cream machine], but it's electric and works a lot faster.

"I probably eat a bite every day at least.

"I'll just come out [front] and get a taste or put some in a little bowl from the machine.

"I would say [my favorite] is cookies and cream."


Staff photos by Chris Seward		 Ice cream pouring from the production machine..

Staff photos by Chris Seward		 Taylor balances a stack of containers filled with chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream as he carries them to a freezer at the Maple View Farm Country Store on Rocky Ridge Road.