Mulligan's Farms

It is finally time for Mulligan’s, the storied ice cream stand of my New Hampshire days, to get the blog mention it deserves. Well, I must clarify a few things first: while I might live in the Boston area currently, I still frequent Mulligan’s whenever I head back to Londonderry to visit my family. So, the NH days still exist, in a manner of speaking. Secondly, this purveyor of desserts is not even in NH – it’s in Tyngsboro, MA, a town bordering NH, which is about 25 minutes from where I grew up. Lastly, my family and I are the only ones who know this place as Mulligan’s. Any other person would call the stand Sullivan Farms Homemade Ice Cream. Why do we call it Mulligan’s, you ask? Well, that doesn’t have any impact on the quality of the ice cream made there…and believe me, it is delicious.

The actual ice cream used at Mulligan’s is thick and creamy, but not creamy to the point of tasting fatty. The flavors are enjoyable – chocolate is light and milky, almost like Swiss chocolate; French vanilla is creamy with the palest yellow color; strawberry strikes the perfect balance between fruit and milk tastes; mint is strong yet sweet, and of course a lovely light green. With these ice creams as bases, Mulligan’s uses the typical ice cream mix-ins to put the best possible spin on the usual flavor combinations. Any chip variety is packed full of chips of varying sizes and textures. Candy ice creams are filled with candy pieces. Cookie flavors contain ground-up cookie powder as well as huge cookie chunks. Swirl ice creams contain enough of the swirled item – fudge, caramel, etc – to be considered a frozen sundae. Two of my favorite inspired flavors are:

• Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup –Swiss chocolate ice cream swirled with peanut butter, and peanut butter cup chunks as well as full cups mixed in
• Mopman’s Grasshopper Pie – a Julie flavor if there ever was one, this ice cream has pretty much all I would want in a dessert, in one scoop: mint ice cream with chocolate chips, Oreo cookies (both crumbs and pieces / entire cookies), and thick, luxurious fudge swirls

Essentially, I can’t think of a better place to fulfill one’s need for traditional, homestyle ice cream. If you’re in the mood for something other than a scoop or two, their sundaes are also delicious, with plenty of rich homemade fudge drizzled over mounds of ice cream. The deal is made even sweeter when you consider the value for your money – a “kiddie” at Mulligan’s is the equivalent of a generous medium, or skimpy large, at any Boston-area creamery; and yes, that’s the smallest size they offer.

So, if you’re in southern New Hampshire for any reason, or taking Route 3 north to a vacation in the Lakes Region or White Mountains, or are simply in the mood for a dessert-themed escape from urban Massachusetts, you owe it to yourself to stop at Mulligan’s. Bring me back a tub of Mopman’s – yes, they will pack mass quantities to go!