Birdsall’s Ice Cream

Birdsall’s is a Mason City magnet for ice cream lovers, making its own since 1938. When she visited in the summer of 2014, Roadfood.com contributor Shiree Schade described the signature peach ice cream as having “excellent texture and tremendous flavor,” and recommended having it with chopped fresh peaches on top. “Manna from Heaven!” she declared.

A nice alternative if you crave a different kind of manna is to have it topped with Johnston’s hot fudge. The ice cream has a powerful enough flavor to maintain its peachy nature even under a blanket of the voluptuous fudgy topping. (Johnston’s, of Milwaukee, was the first company to make and market hot fudge sauce.)

When peach ice cream is not in season, we recommend banana fudge ice cream, which contains real bananas. Of course, Birdsall’s offers a full menu of turtle sundaes, banana splits, cones, cups, shakes, and sodas.