At this very moment, the Boise Ice Cream Festival is scooping epic, cutting-edge ice cream all over town. Check out the schedule before everything is sold out!

In preparation for the sweet onslaught, I visited beloved local landmark Goody’s to get in touch with Boise’s ice cream roots. Manager Kati Durkin was kind enough to take me through the ice cream making process, which was both entertaining and educational.

Though Goody’s arrived in Boise in 1996, it was built to honor an earlier time. The soda fountain, for instance, is a trophy from the 1930s.

Every bite of Goody’s ice cream originates from half-gallon cartons of “ice cream mix” — a special blend of cream and sugar made specifically for Goody’s by a dairy in Oregon.

The cartons are emptied into a tub atop the ice cream making machine, and then the mix flows through a spigot into the belly of the beast, where the cream is stirred and chilled until it’s thick and custardy.

To make vanilla ice cream, they add 3 ounces of incredibly concentrated vanilla extract. How high-quality is this vanilla? A single gallon costs $1,000.

For chocolate ice cream, they dump a bucket of uber-rich chocolate (the same chocolate used in Goody’s truffle fillings) into the machine while it’s still agitating the mix.

For oreo ice cream, they start with the vanilla base and then spin pounds of crushed Oreos into the ice cream as it pours out of the machine. It’s beautiful to watch.

One batch produces six eight-liter drums of gorgeous fresh ice cream.

From there the drums head to a blast chiller and then a series of storage freezers, moving ever closer to their big moment in a cone, sundae or milkshake. Durkin said that in the height of summer, they can empty an 8-liter drum of ice cream in ten minutes.

In her time at Goody’s, Durkin hasn’t just mastered the dark arts of ice cream creation. She has also made important discoveries about human nature.

“I’ve learned that people always want more,” she said. “They always want more ice cream. If you ask, do you want one or two scoops? Even if they were initially thinking one, they’re like ‘I’ll have two scoops.’”

That spirit of self-indulgence, I’d like to imagine, is precisely what the Boise Ice Cream Festival aims to celebrate.

May your June be covered in sprinkles. ∎

Head to Goody’s on June 5th to learn about the History of Ice Cream in Boise.