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Made in Cirencester · wholesale & events

Ice cream made in batches small enough to taste before it leaves.

Roll Me Up Ltd is an ice cream manufacturer. We make in small batches. The churn is emptied and started again for each one, and every batch is tasted before it goes into the hardening freezer. What we make goes out to wholesale customers who sell it on, and to events where it is scooped and served on the day.

Talk to the creamery

From churn to tub

What actually happens between the delivery of the dairy and a sealed tub going into the freezer.

  1. Mixing the base

    Dairy, sugars and, in a custard base, egg yolk are weighed and combined. The proportions are what decide whether the finished ice cream is soft enough to scoop straight from the freezer or sets rock hard, so the recipe is weighed, never estimated.

  2. Pasteurising

    The base is heated and held so that it is safe, then cooled quickly through the range where things would otherwise go wrong. This step is not optional and it is the one that a home cook can skip and a manufacturer cannot.

  3. Ageing

    The cooled base rests before it is churned. Resting lets the fat crystallise and the proteins take up water, and the difference it makes to the texture of the finished ice cream is out of all proportion to the effort involved — which is why it gets the time it needs.

  4. Churning

    The aged base is frozen while being stirred, which keeps the ice crystals small and works in air. How much air goes in is the single biggest difference between industrial ice cream and this kind: less air means a denser, slower-melting product and fewer tubs from the same quantity of mix.

  5. Folding in

    Anything with texture — fruit, nuts, ripples, pieces — goes in at the end, once the ice cream is churned but still soft. Added earlier it would be pulverised by the paddle; added later it would not distribute.

  6. Hardening and labelling

    Filled tubs go into a hardening freezer to firm right through before storage. Each batch is labelled with what it is, what is in it and which batch it came from, so that anything can be traced back to the day and the mix it was made from.

What we churn

Ice cream divides up by what the base is made of, and each base behaves differently in the churn. Filter by base to see what that means in practice. What is actually in the freezer on a given week depends on the season and on what the wholesale orders call for.

  • Egg custard base

    Yolks cooked into the dairy before churning. Rich, yellow, slow to melt, and the base that carries warm flavours — vanilla, caramel, spice — better than any other, because the fat in the yolk holds onto them.

  • Plain cream base

    No egg. Cleaner and lighter on the tongue, and the right choice when the point is to taste what has been folded in, not the ice cream around it.

  • Ripple and swirl work

    A sauce folded through at the soft stage so it stays as a distinct ribbon instead of dissolving. The sauce has to be made so it stays soft at freezer temperature, otherwise the ripple sets to a hard seam.

  • Fruit sorbet

    Fruit, sugar and water with no dairy at all. The sugar level has to be judged against how sweet the fruit already is, because sugar is what keeps a sorbet scoopable — too little and it freezes to a solid block.

  • Fruit ice cream

    Fruit worked into a dairy base. Water in the fruit is the enemy of texture, so it is usually cooked down or macerated first to concentrate it before it goes anywhere near the churn.

  • Oat and coconut bases

    Dairy-free bases built to carry fat and body of their own. Coconut brings its own flavour and is built into the recipe instead of masked; oat is more neutral and takes flavour more readily. Both are made on a separate run with cleaned-down equipment.

  • Water ices

    The simplest thing we make and the least forgiving. With no fat to soften the texture, everything depends on the sugar balance and on churning hard enough to keep the crystals fine.

  • Inclusion-heavy batches

    Ice cream carrying a lot of pieces — biscuit, nut, chocolate. These go in by hand once the churn is finished, and the base is made slightly firmer so it can hold the weight without the pieces sinking to the bottom of the tub.

Wholesale and events

We supply two kinds of customer. Wholesale buyers — shops, cafés, kitchens and caterers — take ice cream in tubs to serve or sell on. Event customers want it scooped and served on the day, which is a different job with different lead times and a different conversation about quantities.

If you are thinking about either, write to the creamery. The useful things to say first are what sort of business you are, roughly what quantity you have in mind, whether you need dairy-free alongside dairy, and when you need it. Allergen information is provided in writing for everything we make, and dairy-free production is run separately from dairy.

creamery@rollmeup.buzz

The creamery

Roll Me Up Ltd
11 Sperringate
Cirencester
GL7 1NA
United Kingdom

Enquiries are handled in writing so that quantities, allergens and dates are recorded properly.