WASHINGTON ISLAND, WIS — Susie’s Sweets, off Main Road on the Island has been in business for its third season now, after opening on July 1st, 2017.
Moving up from the New London area, Susan and Henry Mohn came to the island to semi-retire. After an anniversary trip to Belize and trying Gelato for the first time, Henry had a brilliant idea; open up a shop on Washington Island, her wife however wasn’t quite on board right away.
“He decided that somebody needed to do this on the island in which I replied he was crazy. But when we got home we decided and looked into it,” said Susan.
Not knowing much about the gelato making process, Susan went to North Carolina for an intensive training course with an Italian company on how to make the delicious treat.
Gelato is different than American ice cream, starting off with the obvious; Gelato is an Italian ice cream. It is made from whole milk instead of heavy creams which weigh down the American ice cream. It is turned slower making it more dense and creamy reducing the amount of air.
The process starts off with a base that contains stabilizers, sugars, emulsifiers, and flavors. These premixed bags come in an assortment of flavors but the top seller of them all is one that was created by Susan.
“We have one that we call door county cherry cheesecake. We use seaquist cherries from Sister Bay and it’s our number one seller,” said Susan.
Milk is added to the base and blended with a hand mixture for a couple minutes until the right consistency. It then sits for 5 to 10 minutes in a refrigerator before going into a batch freezer. An auger inside slowly turns the mixture as it freezes. After eight minutes, the mixture is removed and put into a blast freezer set at -40 degrees for twenty minutes.
Finally it is brought to a regular freezer as the temperature slowly rises to 11 degrees at which point is ready to be served to all those sweet tooth’s.
