Perfect Substitute #2: Ice-Cream

I love ice-cream. During my childhood, I thought Marigold was the way to go, until Swensons and Haagen Daz came along and spoilt me in my adolescent years. In my college days, after I've contented myself with the flavours of Haagen Daz, I read about Ben and Jerry's success in my Marketing textbooks and wondered what exotic brand of ice-cream is this to have taken the American market by storm?

When I was about to graduate, I started noticing this colourful pint sized packages in Carrefour and NTUC--the legendary Ben and Jerrys! Plus my friends treated me to a sinful gorging on Bovine Divine (or was it Divine Bovine? Whatever...). Ever since then, I've been a faithful follower of their sweet, sweet ice-cream stuffed with chunks of chocolate chips, assorted nuts and sweets. After a while though, its richness and sweetness became too much for my palate. That was when I discovered Tom's Palette.

Tom's Palette was discovered during our rounds of walking around aimlessly while paktoh-ing. We were going through Shaw Towers to get to Suntec when this little ice-cream palour grabbed our attention. Home-made ice-cream? Never tried that! Must try it one day... And so we did. Boy, were we ever so glad we did! The service there is friendly and polite. The stall owners were always happy to let people sample as many flavours as they liked, and that is a real treat, considering the variety they have! The range of flavours are so special... There are the standard staples such as vanilla, chocolate, coffee. There are also the exotic ones such as Lavendar, Chrysenthemum, Soursop, etc... My personal favourites are the boring predictable staples, but Tom's Palette does it so well, these aren't boring anymore! The chocolate ice-cream is rich, creamy and chock-full of bitter sweet chocolate goodness. The vanilla isn't plain at all--it's simple and elegant, flecked with black vanilla seeds (they use REAL vanilla beans for their production, not just any el cheapo vanilla chemicals!). The rum and raisin? Oh you can get drunk with pleasure on that alone!

It's not just the ice-cream that gets the stamp of quality on it; even their ice-cream cone is delicious! They go through the trouble of making their own ice-cream cone! Is that just SO GOOD or what! Seriously, it's worth making a trip down to Shaw Centre just to eat the ice-cream cone. It's crispy, fragrant, freshly baked and just sweet enough. When you've got one of their uber generous scoops of ice-cream on that cone, I tell you, you're a happy camper.

I've been meaning to post pictures of this ice-cream for the longest time, but whenever I'm faced with one of their creations, I simply forget about the camera sitting in my bag and go straight down to eating it. Anyways, today I didn't forget! Here are some pictures of this perfect substitute. Please, don't bother going down to Haagen Daz or Ben and Jerry's anymore, when you can get this home-made goodness at $2.80 for a small cup. For an uber generous double scoop ice-cream cone, it's but $4, which will hardly dent your wallet. Just make sure your stomach has enough space for that rich, sweet, creamy goodness.