Varani's Forum Café

We have spent the last few weeks painting our huge hall, stairs and landing and thought we deserved a break.

We've wanted to visit Knockroon for a while.  It is near Cumnock and New Cumnock where Martin's mother's family come from and we thought it was worthwhile to see what they are up to.

Knockroon is an estate of houses being built on the estate of Dumfries House which was rescued by the Prince of Wales.  It is being built on similar principles to Poundsbury in Dorset but in the Ayrshire venacular style.  We were made very welcome at the visitor centre and encouraged to have a look round.  I loved the architecture and the idea behind it all.  They are only in phase one, they have got planning permission for 700 houses so they have a long way to go and I guess we will be checking up on their progress over the years.

Anyway after that we drove on to New Cumnock for a quick look before turning right back towards Kilmarnock to visit Varani's Forum Café.

Varani's states that they always have at least 25 flavours available and they did not disappoint with flavours ranging from the classic Raspberry Ripple to Banana with lots of natural and unnatural flavours in between but we both plumped for a small tub of plain vanilla ice.

Unfortunately Varani's does takeaway only so we had to eat on the hoof but the ice cream was to die for so we did not mind too much and outside the shop were plenty of other people who looked like they had travelled some distance for the ice cream and were eating it as soon as they could. 

The vanilla had a slight toffee colour and a rich but mild toffee flavour.  Varani's state that their vanilla ice cream is 96.5% fat free so I am not sure how they have injected the creaminess but it was delicious and definitely reminded me of the ice cream I grew up with.  

We will be back!