Burlington Heath Bar
Schoolhouse Ice Cream is on 3A about two miles north of 128; it's in a strip mall with True North Coffee, across the street from Mehfil Indian1. Lots of parking, picnic tables with umbrellas out front and booths inside. On a mid-November evening it wasn't crowded but there was a steady stream of takeout traffic.
They have two dozen ice cream flavors, with complicated ones like "Chocolate Fudge Brownie Dough" and "Blue Moon" alongside basics like "Mocha Chip" and "Black Raspberry". They also have a short list of frozen yogurt, sherbet, slush, and sugar-free flavors, and basic soft serve. They do make up for it in toppings - three kinds of dip cone, dry toppings including gummy bears, skittles, and snow caps, and a bunch of topics. They also have both rainbow and chocolate sprinkles (but no Jimmies.)
Ice cream is served in cups, pints, quarts; sundaes go up to X-large and Banana Boat. Drinks include frappes, malted, sherbet cooler, slush freeze2. On the extreme end, there's a Sundae Bucket Challenge, "10 scoops, 10 toppings, 1 spoon", and while they don't have named sundaes, they do have a dozen or so Staff Suggestions up on the wall, there are certainly enough options to build what you want.
They do emphasize that they use 16% butterfat for their own ice cream. However, most of the places I've been are on the high end of the scale anyway. The other detail on the sign is that this is "Schoolhouse of Cape Cod" - the backstory is that the Mom of one of the owners has an ice cream shop in Harwich Port out on the cape that they got advice from.4
The Ice Cream
I went a little fancier than usual and added whipped cream and walnuts to this one. Since there were multiple "location" flavors, I went with both of them: "Harwichport Mud Pie" and "Burlington Heath Bar".
The "Burlington Heath Bar" was sweet and crunchy, with enough chocolate from the heath bar to be more than just a butter crunch variant.
The "Harwichport Mud Pie" is named for the location of the owner's Mom's ice cream shop out on the Cape. Very rich, lots of chocolate mixed throughout; their website lacks details but I enjoyed it, it was a nice complement to the "Burlington Heath Bar" I started with.
Next Time
I'm definitely going to have to remember this place, while I'm not in the immediate neighborhood as much it is still pretty convenient (if you're coming from the east, you can get off 128 at Winn St and take that to where it meets 3A and you're almost there.) I'm going to have to give their soft serve dip cones a try, also "Chocolate Peanut Butter" - and I should at least ask what the "Blue Moon" flavor is.
-
Up until 2015 I worked for Nokia in Burlington and Schoolhouse (and Mehfil, though it was Ritu Ki Rasoi at the time) was an occasional after-work choice, since it was right down the road. Although I don't have pictures, the red interior seems unchanged since then - not that it looks old, it's been well maintained, it's just very memorable. ↩
-
This is New England, "Slush Freeze" probably counts as a non-infringing weather-named concoction. I suppose that means I'm now on a quest for a shop that has a "Graupel" drink, but it would probably have to have Dippin' Dots3 mixed in. ↩
-
Researching this, I found a vendor recipe for a Dippin' Dots Affogato which would work, but also suggests I'm doing too much background research here... ↩
-
Starting from Harwich Port, it turns out there are a lot of ice cream shops on the Cape, but (1) many of them are also Fried Seafood shops (2) a larger proportion of them are closed for the winter. ↩