OUR JOURNEY
Baboo Gelato was set up in 2015 by Annie Hanbury, a trained gelatiere, who wanted to combine her passion for making seriously good ice cream with the glut of fabulous ripe fruit on her doorstep.
OUR GELATO
Gelato is not simply the Italian name for ice cream.
Although it feels very smooth, gelato is made using more milk than cream, and so is much lower in fat than traditional ice cream. There is also less air in gelato, which means it packs more flavour.
OUR AWARDS
We have been honoured to win awards every year since we started, most recently Champion Ice Cream 2020 from Taste of the West for our Salted Caramel; and Best British Specialty from the Great British Food Awards 2020. We are a Great Taste Producer.
WHY BABOO
GELATO
Our commitment to using real, high-quality ingredients is what truly sets us apart. We use no artificial flavourings or colours. Our journey begins with organic milk sourced from Holy Cow in North Perrott, Somerset, or Glebe Farm's100% British oat milk. From there, we meticulously select the finest local ingredients, and when our quest takes us beyond our local borders, we seek out the world's most exceptional producers who provide us with the highest-quality ingredients. We always try to buy directly from the farm, locally or globally as we want to know exactly where and who it comes from.
Gelato tastes best at -12ºC. This allows the taste buds to be more receptive, which, together with the lower air and cream content, makes the flavour of gelato much more intense. You can achieve this at home by taking the tub out of your freezer (usually at -18ºC) and putting it into your fridge for about 15 minutes before you want to eat it.
SORBET
We love sorbets. If you’re a sorbet-sceptic, please give us a go; we’re confident we can convert you. Ours are so smooth you’ll think it’s a gelato (but it isn’t, no dairy in our sorbets ever). Many of our sorbets contain 50% fruit. And they’re so alive with flavour, they make delicious eating on their own, or a fresh complement to a pudding or cake.
We source a lot of our fruit from local farms and orchards. We even get our four (occasionally reluctant) children to pick elderflowers from local hedgerows, and damsons from a friendly Victorian orchard.
We also work with a lovely Sicilian family to bring over their organic lemons, blood oranges, grapefruit, mandarins and limes.
We are so proud to be able to work with British and Italian farms and orchards, many of which have been in the same families for generations, and who care so passionately about their products.
SOLAR POWERED
We are thrilled to have been awarded a grant (November 2023) by Low Carbon Dorset as part of the UK Government’s Shared Prosperity Fund to add solar panels to our production facility in Rampisham, Dorset. This will materially reduce our carbon footprint by 14.55 tonnes of Carbon Dioxide each year.
EU SUPPORT
Back in 2017-2019, we recieved some amazing support. We were delighted to have been offered a generous grant from the EU to support our growth, helping us to buy more top quality machinery. We are so sorry that such far sighted and supportive schemes are no longer available in the UK.