A CARE home in Launceston resembled Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory recently, as residents got stuck into an ice cream sundae competition.

Excitement was running high at Kernow House as the talented staff and residents were named the joint winners of Barchester and Lakeland Dairies’ Ice Cream Sundae competition.

Staff and residents are now looking forward to a sweet treat, as their prize is a visit from an ice cream van with free ice cream for everyone at the home.

To celebrate National Ice Cream Day, residents from Barchester’s care homes and hospitals up and down the country were invited to compete for the coveted Best Ice Cream Sundae title. The competition is run by Lakeland Dairies and the bar is set very high. Many of Barchester’s residents are very skilled cooks and everyone loves ice cream, so the competition was fierce.

The staff and residents at Kernow House put their heads together and donned their aprons to come up with the most amazing ice cream sundae recipe, decorated to perfection. Their fabulous sundae was designed as an ice cream dessert served in a sundae glass and consisted of delicious ingredients such as fresh lavender infused in milk and cream, which was used to make a custard before freezing it. They also made a vodka cream to serve with the ice cream.

Leigh Stanley, general manager at Kernow House said: “Our residents had such a brilliant time taking part in this competition, it has been such fun. Everyone here loves to get creative and we all love ice cream so we were all very excited to take part. It has been a real collaborative process – refining the recipe and trying different versions of the design. We’ve all loved eating the previous versions until we came up with the perfect winning design! It really has been no hardship!”

Richard Evans, resident ambassador at Kernow House, added: “I absolutely love ice cream so I knew this was the competition for me! We all had a brilliant time trying out new flavours and ingredients. The thing about ice cream is, you have to really eat it there and then so we all got stuck in and helped out! We’re all very excited about our prize!”

Annie’s Whippy came to Kernow House on what might have been the last sunny Saturday and served ice cream to residents and staff. This was a fantastic prize and everyone enjoyed putting in their orders for ice cream.

Kernow House is run by Barchester Healthcare, one of the UK’s largest care providers, which is committed to delivering high-quality care across its care homes and hospitals. Kernow House provides nursing care.