Cream of the crop

• By ELLYN COUVILLION
• Livingston-Tangipahoa writer
• Published: Mar 6, 2008

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PONCHATOULA — The strawberries that Heather and Dale Robertson grow on the fields surrounding their home are sold at farmers’ markets and grocery stores and used by chefs in fine restaurants in New Orleans.

Now, they’ll be the strawberries in the “Ponchatoula Strawberry” ice cream that Kleinpeter Farms Dairy produced for the first time last week, in its recently opened ice cream plant in Baton Rouge.

“I can’t wait to taste it,” Heather Robertson said Feb. 28.

She and her husband, who are assisted by his father, John Roy Robertson — he previously farmed the roughly 10-acre property — provided 800 pounds of strawberries for the first batch of the strawberry ice cream.

The dairy company also began producing chocolate and vanilla ice cream in February, Jeff Kleinpeter, president, said.

The strawberry ice cream is the first in a line of ice cream products that Kleinpeter is launching, using Louisiana produce and flavors, he said.

“There’s nothing better than our own Louisiana products,” Kleinpeter said.

Coming online soon is Kleinpeter ice cream featuring Bergeron pecans from New Roads and Aunt Sally pralines from New Orleans, Kleinpeter said.

The company is also using Louisiana sugar cane to sweeten the ice cream, he said. Sugar-free ice cream will also be available, he added.

Other Louisiana products he’d like to pair with Kleinpeter ice cream, in the future, include Ruston peaches; Louisiana-grown blueberries; and chocolate from the Elmers Candy company in New Orleans, he said.

Kleinpeter will be rolling out its ice cream, in stages over the next several weeks, throughout its market, which covers about a 150-mile radius around Baton Rouge, Kleinpeter said.

The ice cream is currently sold in Baton Rouge and in portions of Livingston Parish, at various groceries, including Associated Grocers stores, he said.

Before they are brought to the Kleinpeter ice cream plant, the Robertsons’ Ponchatoula strawberries are first washed and de-stemmed at the processing plant of wine-maker Henry Amato in Independence.