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Puhoi Valley Café was one of the prestigious category winners in the annual New Zealand Ice Cream awards.
The café took out the Kids Choice category with their Puhoi Choc Bomb – a rich treat of Belgium chocolate ice cream liberally interspersed with chunks of chocolate fish.
A panel of 12 Auckland school children selected the Puhoi Choc Bomb after sampling dozens of ice creams at the FoodBowl, a food testing facility in Mangere, and rating the ice creams from “really yummy” to “yucky”.
Café manager Tash Crombie describes the ice cream as a “chocolate explosion in the mouth” and says it’s wonderful that it won in the kids category, making the café an even more attractive place for children to visit.
It wasn’t the only win for Puhoi Valley Café. It won gold awards for their single origin huehuetenango affogato and its Puhoi sour lemon sorbet, and it won silvers for their Puhoi orange and sweet chai latte, Puhoi strawberry and lime sorbet and salted caramel with a pinch of Marlborough sea salt and Greek yoghurt.
Charlies Gelato in Matakana was also a winner at the awards.
Charlies won a gold for its kombucha sorbetto and silvers for the strawberry gelato and mango sorbetto.
Charlies director Andrew Cole says the company was particularly pleased with kombucha sorbetto win, which was created in collaboration with local kombucha producer Daily Organics.
“It’s great, because it’s a new flavour we’ve been developing and it’s only been on the market for four months,” he says.
The ice cream awards are run by the NZ Ice Cream Manufacturers Association (NZICMA) and this year there were more than 300 entries in 13 categories.
NZICMA spokesperson Hannah Wood says New Zealand-made ice cream and gelato are arguably the best in the world.
“They are made from top-quality dairy and other locally sourced ingredients, and the awards are a great opportunity to showcase this,” she says.
