Summer Scoops: Sawyer's Dairy Bar

GILFORD — Yesterday morning at Sawyer's Dairy Bar was Cookie Monster and Birthday Cake ice cream making day.

Cookie Monster — a blue mix with chunks of dark chocolate and Oreo cookies, and Birthday Cake — a yellow mix with blue frosting and red, white, and blue sprinkles, are two of the favorite flavors of ice-cream master Pati Litchfield, who has been making the ice cream since her and her husband Larry bought the iconic business a few years ago.

"We thought we'd use red,white and blue sprinkles to celebrate the Fourth of July," she said.

Assisted ably by friend and co-worker DeeDee Goddard, Litchfield said the two of them are self-taught and the recipes are all her own. They worked together almost seamlessly in a back corner of Sawyer's kitchen with Matilda — the nearly 65 year old ice cream machine that came with the building.

Right now, Sawyer's has 41 flavors of ice cream — all homemade and all available on a cone, in a dish, a frappe, a sundae, or in hand-packed pints and quarts.

When asked if she sold the ice cream in any local stores, she said they have been approached a few times but each year they sell about 10,000 gallons of ice cream from the dairy bar alone and they don't have the capacity to make some for sale outside of it.

Litchfield said Sawyer's goes through more vanilla ice cream than any other flavor because of the many sundaes and frappes they make but the most popular stand-alone flavor is black raspberry — one of Litchfield's recipes.

She said the one flavor she struggled with was butter crunch.

"I just couldn't get it right," Litchfield said. She said butter crunch is one of the more popular flavors of ice cream in Germany and Austria and she found a German woman who lives locally who was willing to be her taste tester for her numerous attempts at the perfect butter crunch ice cream.

"I finally made a batch and she came by and said 'You've got it," she said. "I really wanted her to be honest with me and now she comes in every week and buys some butter crunch ice cream."

Litchfield is experimenting with two new flavors — S'Mores and Kitchen Sink — literally an ice cream flavor that has nearly everything in it.

"We'll test drive those this weekend and see what happens," she said.

Litchfield also makes her own frozen yogurt and is working to expand that line because the dairy bar no longer serves soft-serve ice cream. She said the machine broke and the repair people wanted $9,000 to fix it.

She said her frozen yogurt uses less butter fat and sugar that other commercial ones and is much better for health and taste. Right now they also have four flavors of homemade sherbet that uses less milk than ice cream.

Sawyer's, located at the intersection of Lakes Shore Road (Rte. 11) and Old Lake Shore Road/Weirs Road (Rte. 11-B) is open seven days a week from 11 a.m. until 8 p.m.

CUTLINE: (Sawyer's Ice cream 007.jpg) Pati Litchfield left and DeeDee Goddard work three day a week to make about 10,000 gallons of ice cream per season at Sawyer's Dairy Bar in Gilford. This photo shows them making a batch of Birthday Cake. Goddard adds the frosting while Litchfield pours in the red, white, and blue sprinkles.