The Dairy Godmother*

At The Dairy Godmother I forfeited my usual effort to maintain distance from subject to greed . The afternoon I visited this Del Ray, Alexandria ice cream shop, the Dessert Of the Day (officially know as the DOD as opposed to the FOTD which is the Flavor Of The Day) was Rhubarb Cobbler, still warm from her oven. It called out for a scoop of her soft custard ice cream. Forget adhering to reporter dispassion. Not possible.

Liz Davis is The Dairy Godmother, dishing up scoops of her home-made frozen custards, ice creams and sorbets in a store that looks like a cottage garden. Walls are sky blue and painted with a picket fence. You sit at picnic tables to spoon up the kind of ice creams that transport you straight back to childhood.

Davis is a modest woman, the only person I've ever come across who put spectacles on to have her photograph taken. She's a CIA-trained pastry chef who has done time in several of the area's top fine-dining restaurants. But although she spent her formative years aged 6 to 16 in Washington as the daughter of a Wisconsin member of Congress, she feels a strong tie to the state of her birth. So when she decided to open her own place, she opted not for pastries but for ice cream and frozen custard. Frozen custard wasn't invented in Wisconsin but its people have taken it to their hearts and stomachs more than any other state's nationals. 

"I miss Wisconsin," writes Davis on her website, where you can learn what frozen custard is and download the week's list of flavors, "and if I could not be there, I was going to create my own little corner of it wherever I was. I also felt it [frozen custard]was a very undervalued food."

She believes ice creams and frozen custards have a far stronger nostalgia link with childhood than do any other dessert. Even her home-baked Dessert of the Day transports you straight back to the days of hair bows and pockets full of string and grass-hidden treasures. It's never a frothy upscale fancy of the sort you find on a $15 fine-dining dessert menu. It's a fruit cobbler, an apple crisp, a pineapple upside-down cake. Eaten with a scoop of frozen custard it drops you straight into the warm vanilla-scented kitchen of your favorite auntie. "Upscale desserts can be extraordinary," says Davis. "But they don't have the emotional impact of a pineapple upside-down cake. People have strong feelings about going as a kid to buy ice cream or custard with family. I wanted to create an emotional place for people. Not just sell them a piece of cake."

But she also crafts some revolutionary adventures in the frozen field. Her list of sorbets is where she has her experimental fun, with a range of flavors that foodies travel miles to buy. Her sorbets offer her a creative outlet. Her own children were lactose intolerant and few ice cream parlors offered sorbets. So when it came to opening her own, she was determined to offer the widest possible choice she could. Besides, creating something ethereal yet of substance out of water, fruit, herbs and sugar is a real challenge. Flavors include Strawberry Balsamico, Gooseberry Black Currant, Mulled Beaujolais, Pink Grapefruit with Angostura, Cranberry with Coriander and Tangerine. Right now she's grilling fruit over mesquite or hickory to concentrate flavor and add a bit of smoke. "The pineapple grilled with pink peppercorns is the newest. The best sorbets evolve naturally from life around you. Sangria, cucumber with fresh mint, strawberry with sweet woodruff, green apples and Riesling..."

Her own and her mother's youthful memories have triggered drives to capture flavor that catapults them back in time. She's created a soft molasses cookie glazed with Postum which she says her dad used to drink during the Depression and World War II. "There is always significance beyond the flavor alone. How are we going to make it through THIS recession without Postum now that they stopped making it!"

We'll just have to scoop up her daily desserts with frozen custard. 

The Dairy Godmother, 2310 Mount Vernon Ave, Alexandria, 703 683 7767.