Karen Kelley, Owner of Kelley Country Creamery & Oakland Lawn Farm Dairy, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin
Ice cream is the blank canvas of the dessert world. Its sweet, creamy base adapts to endless flavors that serve as the perfect complement to a celebratory meal or a fun departure from the norm at the local ice cream stand.
Karen Kelley, the owner of Kelley Country Creamery in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, knows this well and says our love affair with ice cream continues well after National Ice Cream Month in July.
Kelley Country Creamery is a family-owned business surrounded by 200 acres of lush green fields that belong to its dairy operation, Oak Lawn Farm. Karen and her husband, Tim, and their five children take flavor very seriously and focus on crafting original flavors around local products and seasonally-available produce. Among the Creamery’s 300-plus flavors, 22 are available each day. Depending on the time of year, they might include Acai Blueberry; Apple Cider; Apricot; Bleu Cheese Pear; Black Cherry; Carrot Cake; Jalapeno; Maple Bacon; Country Bumpkin Pumpkin; or Christmas Pudding (a rum-flavored ice cream with dried fruit and walnuts available in fall and winter).
Kelley Country Creamery makes a unique flavor profile using The Perfect Purée El Corazon blend, a blend of Passion Fruit, Blood Orange and Pomegranate. El Corazon has a deep, rich red color with a bold, intense flavor and won a silver award at the 2010 Los Angeles International Wine and Spirits Competition.
Kelley Country Creamery originally used El Corazon in a refreshing, non-dairy sorbet.
“People really liked that,” Karen says. “Then we thought we’d use it in the ice cream and people have loved that even more. When you combine [El Corazon] with the ice cream, it’s tangy — but not too much — and smoother than sorbet.”
Like many of the flavors at Kelley Country Creamery, El Corazon invites people to try something new.
“People aren’t quite sure what blood orange, pomegranate and passion fruit are and they’re not quite sure what the taste is,” Karen says.
Kelley Country Creamery’s ice cream base is a carefully-guarded trade secret made with Grade A milk from its herd of 65 Holsteins. Five gallons of ice cream mix and six 30-ounce jars of El Corazon yield nine gallons of ice cream, or three serving tubs.
Karen says she learned about The Perfect Purée from a mailing and requested samples. Along with El Corazon, she’s used The Perfect Purée Red Raspberry Puree and Strawberry Puree in sorbets.
Karen especially likes The Perfect Purée Red Raspberry Puree because it’s seedless.
“A lot of people don’t like seeds so that one is really a favorite,” she says.
Oak Lawn Farm is located on a country road named after the Kelleys where 39 Kelley families and counting have lived for the past 150 years.
The Kelleys are committed to sustainable agriculture and are recognized for their farming practices. They keep their cows on green pastures, weather permitting, which is important for milk quality and taste.
The Creamery is a local destination with a viewing window in the ice cream parlor for visitors to watch the ice cream being made and an old-fashioned sun porch overlooking the dairy farm.