April '11 SCOOP

Springtime’s sweet swell saturates and suffuses successions of sprouting seedlings, shoots and shrubs. Above you and about you and even inside you an awesome allness awaits awareness. We wish wellness with whoops and whispers, we welcome with warmth.

Our Dearest Fountaineers,

What a thrill it is to see new life revive our surroundings! Fresh breath and light restore beings burrowed in slumber, and we wake along with them to present you with a wide assortment of new sweets! Banana Ice Cream has returned to our menu, and those who have acquainted themselves with its creamy luxuriousness have long been anticipating its re-introduction. The flavor is immersed with puréed bananas and incorporates our farm fresh dairy, its taste is exquisite. Another ice cream flavor that will be making its debut is “Chocolate Peanut Butter Swirl”, a hardy flavor comprised of midnight cocoa powder and a homemade peanut butter sauce whirled throughout the ice cream in hardened sweeps of granulated peanuts. For those who favor the salty and the dark, this flavor may speak more adequately to your tastes. Another flavor to be launched will be our “Honeycomb Ice Cream”, its base is steeped with a honey essence which drones with a hiveful of flavor and sweetness. Throughout the ice cream, homemade honeycomb candy is crunchily studded. We will be featuring this flavor in our “Land of Milk and Honey” Ice Cream Soda, a delicious drink made with Levi’s Vanilla Cream Soda, fresh milk from Longacre’s dairy farm. This blissful beverage will anoint your tastebuds with richness and pleasure.

Eastertime is also right around the corner, so close that we can practically hear the padded paws of our vested rabbit friend thumping the city’s cobblestone. We will be decorating our store in pastels, and the Shane Confectionery display window will house a ceramic menagerie of associated hares carrying their chocolate-filled Easter baskets. Additionally, we will be making Shane’s world famous buttercream candies, this season in four exciting varieties! These include dark chocolate covered coconut cream, milk chocolate covered peanut butter cream, dark chocolate chocolate-vanilla buttercreams, and milk chocolate chocolate butter cream. The buttercream fondant is cooked on machinery dating back to the 1920s, and is composed of sugar cooked slowly while churned in water, vanilla extract, rich butter, some maize treacle, chocolate liquor, and vanilla extract. For three generations, Shane customers have lined the block to purchase these treats. We encourage you to purchase these wonders to keep with a sweet Philadelphia tradition.

It is impossible to transition from reportage of glad tidings to reportage of deep and personal loss without calling attention to the tonal shift. While our business persists on maintaining the mindset of living in the past, there are certain events that take place in our present times which we cannot ignore. The earthquake, tsunami, and ensuing chaos that have devastated Japan and its isles call for immediate and substantial action and relief. It is difficult to comprehend the full scale of the catastrophe, but, regardless, we feel obliged to assist those suffering in whatever way that we are able to. We have decided to donate 100% of the proceeds of our “Japanese Thirst-Ade” to the Japan America Society of Greater Philadelphia's Disaster Relief Fund. Our thoughts and prayers go out to those in need, to the afflicted and the rescue workers and caretakers. While the damage is expected by any measure to be longstanding and difficult, we hope and pray for the speediest possibly recovery.

We speak soberly now and with heavy hearts to report the unfortunate passing of Dan Nitz, a former employee of ours, who had worked as a soda jerk during the very first summer of our operation in 2005. Born on January the 25th of 1987, Dan was an artistic individual whose life was steeped in poetry, he held a unique outlook on life, and is said by former staff to have always had a “light in his eyes”. In 2005 Dan was diagnosed with acute Leukemia, and throughout five trying years he fought to bring beauty into the world with his artwork and deeds. To the misfortune of all, the disease progressed and took his life this past February. He is now in the company of eternal light. We ask that you please donate to The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. You can learn more about Dan at www.DanNitz.com

It is with regret that we close our monthly correspondence with such sadness, but we ask that you please honor the memory of those who left us too soon with deeds of loving kindness and affection. May we all be reminded of life’s fragility, but also, its continuation. The revival of life in this Spring season seems emptier with these losses. But by affirming the singularities of life within ourselves through kind and brave action, we affirm also the continuum of life and its preciousness.
That Life and Love may always last,
The Franklin Fountain.

March '11 SCOOP

Wrapping winds whirl Winter’s weight while we weary witnesses watch and wait for widespread white weather to withhold its wrath. Fortunately for Franklin Fountaineers, fair and favorable flushes of fortune found from fully fragrant flowered fields and forests fills and frills our Fountain’s frame, force, and faces, forthwith and forevermore.

St. Patrick’s day is coming up soon, and we are caught fully by the Celtic spirit! We will be decorating the store with charm and greenery, and we shall serve a variety of Irish-American sweets. “Irish Potatoes”, a historic Philadelphia confection, will be served once more at The Franklin Fountain. These treats have been made by the Shane family for generations, and we will be citing their early twentieth century recipe in concocting the treats in the old Shane candy kitchen. They are made by hand-shaping balls of shredded coconut fondant flavored with vanilla extract rolling them about in a coat of ground cinnamon and diced pignola nuts. They are as delicious as they are traditional, and we request that you purchase a box and give them a try.

We will also be featuring the “Irish Rose Ice Cream Soda”, a sweet and fragrant beverage named after the song “My Wild Irish Rose” written by stage actor Chancellor Olcott in 1899 for his production of “A Romance of Athlone” on Broadway. The drink is made with Schoenhofen Brewery’s “Green River” soda, a scoop of our creamy coconut ice cream, and a sprout of homemade whipped cream garnishing the garden of tastes. The drink is sumptuous and sugary, and quite enticing.

This year, we will be celebrating our five year anniversary of making our own homemade ice cream. We have been awarded multiple times by Philadelphia Magazine, featured on internationally broadcast television programs, and, most importantly, earned the respect of peers, friends, and returning clientele all because of the integrity and outstanding taste of our ice cream. We are quite proud for having stuck it out this long, and will continue to thrive for years to come with the help of your support and patronage.

On the evening of Tuesday, March the 2nd, the Berley Brothers participated in a panel and lecture on the history of confectioners in Philadelphia at the Philadelphia History Museum at the Atwater Kent. Tony Walter, owner of Lore’s Chocolates, sat on the panel alongside the Berleys. The event was moderated by Christie Speer, an editor of The Philadelphia Magazine. Ryan and Eric Berley displayed a power point presentation on the intricate topic, highlighting Philadelphia confectioners such as Eliza Leslie, The Parkinson Family, H. O. Wilbur, and even Milton Hershey. They also documented and lectured on industrialization’s role in how candies were produced, packaged, and distributed, and why Philadelphia specifically was so crucial to the confectionery world. Veteran confectioner and food historian Jack Lees of Casani Candy also contributed a vast wealth of historical information to a transfixed audience.

The event was well received and well attended, and the Berleys got to show sneak-peek glimpses of the Shane Confectionery restoration, citing the tireless efforts of our workforce, including our site laborers: Creative Director Emily Malina, Pastry Chef Davina Soondrum, and Historian Jeffrey Heinbach. Afterwards, homemade Shane truffles and Irish Potatoes were served to those attended, as were Wilbur Buds donated by Wilbur’s Chocolates, and a delicious assortment of chocolates donated by Lore’s chocolates. A sweet way to end an evening!

We have three new ice cream flavors to debut this month. We couldn’t have made two of these flavors without the assistance and support of the wonderful Girl Scouts of America, founded by Juliette Gordon Low in 1912. We are using some of their annually sold cookies in our “Thin Mint Chip Ice Cream” (featuring crushed Thin Mint Cookies in white peppermint ice cream, a green creme de menthe swirl, and dark bittersweet Wilbur’s chocolate strewn throughout) and “Shortbread Ice Cream” (Madagascar and Mexican vanilla based flecked with crushed vanilla beans, and the 1922 original recipe for girl scout shortbread cookies.) We hope that when you taste these flavors, you also ingest the values of honesty, fairness, courage, compassion, character, sisterhood, confidence, and citizenship.

Stay tuned to forthcoming news announcements regarding our Easter Season Confectionery Line. We hope to serve homemade buttercream Easter Eggs, a variety of seasonal chocolates, and other goods to warm your heart and soul.

May new life revive you. May rainbows become present in your sky, and may you present your own rainbows to horizons to come.

The Franklin Fountain.

February '11 SCOOP

Fellow Fountaineers, we’ve some news to drop that will swell your heart, wet your eyes, and lift your spirits -- Eric Berley, co-proprietor of The Franklin Fountain, has just gotten married! The blushing bride, Kiersten (who was gowned in a windy snowfall of lacy fabric) has worked at the Fountain for a few years now.

She and Eric fell into deep and true love amidst the bubbly hiss of our soda fountain, the soda syrup bottles arrayed in a rainbow’s spectrum and promise, the incessant ring of an antique cash register’s bell which awards wings to countless angels, and the constant hubbub of friends, family, and strangers who helped to nurture, tender, and witness their growing affection. The wedding occurred at the historic Roycroft Inn in East Aurora New York, founded by the American visionary Elbert Hubbard (Mr. Hubbard was a renegade and an eccentric who wore an expansive, ever-brimming hat atop his head, to don the “thinkery” beneath which was equally larger-than-life. He was a romantic and an individualist who held a sky-deep belief in handcrafting goods, and impregnating every produced artifact, printed page, spoken word, and placed footstep with as much meaning and self-awareness as possible.)

The Inn was constructed and furnished with the ideals, hard work, and sheer creative force of "the Roycroft, " a most impressive art colony in the history of the United States. The bride and groom selected this location because it mirrored like no where else {save for 116 Market Street} the values, idyllic nutrition, spiritual balance, and full-blossomed creativity that binds and sustains the entirety of themselves. Kiersten has had an interest in Arts and Crafts (a British-based movement which Hubbard brought to America with his own reinvented style) for some time now, and her family hails from nearby Buffalo. It is with first-hand testimony that I can relay to you that the whole thing transpired with through-and-through magic. A puffy blanket of snow enwrapped the village which thousands of artisans called home; and the inn housed dozens of guests who knew the bride and groom throughout their childhoods, scholastic careers, workplaces, or some combination therein.

The ceremony took place at a cozy church which was hardly distinguishable from the tumbling snow around it, and from which hung on the edges of its roof weeping icicles. Brother and fellow co-proprietor of “the Fountain” Ryan Berley was the best man, and read from the pulpit the selection of Psalm 19, issuing this appropriate bit of scripture: “The sun lives in the heavens where God placed it and moves across the skies as radiant as a bridegroom going to his wedding,” For indeed the sun was shining through the stained glass chapel windows and the bridegroom did look, if I might say, rather sunshiny, with the smile of his lifetime underneath his signature moustache.

Ryan went on to further supplicate, declaring that “God’s laws are pure, eternal, and just! They are more desirable than gold. They are sweeter than honey dripping from a honeycomb.” This line of scripture would be put to the test that evening during the reception when, for dessert, our “Rose Honeycomb” ice cream was served by the newlyweds who issued the ceremonial “first scoop” with a heart-shaped dipper. The purity and desirability of the Diety’s laws may get the blue-ribbon, but we’d like to think that that evening, our ice cream placed an honorable second.The pastor who married the two was an old college chum of Eric’s from William and Mary, and after their exchange of “I do”s, he enclosed the two soda jerks into their life of holy matrimony. We wish them all the love and happiness that our beating hearts can. For additional photographs, check out the amazing blog: http://amypphotos.blogspot.com/2011/01/kiersten-and-eric.html

Speaking of love, happiness, and hearts, we appear to be right smack-dab in the middle of the season for it! Yes, once again, St. Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, and you can trust with certainty that we’re doing our honest best to bring about the holiday with romance and class. Expected to see underneath glass domes the finest hand-rolled French-styled truffles that your eyes could catch or your tastebuds know. We’ll also be bringing out chocolate-dipped strawberries, jars full of conversation hearts, sugared fruit jellies, Jordan almonds (in white, pink, and red.) and we will be featuring our staple “Broken Hearts Sundae” (for those of you with the real thing, we hope that you’re on the mend to a full recovery.)

Additionally, we will be featuring the “Love Potion Ice Cream Soda”, made with Nesbitt’s Strawberry Soda (The company began in 1927 in starry Los Angelos, and in the 40’s and 50’s was advertised by the then-unknown knock-out Marilyn Monroe) and a scoop of our homemade Strawberry Ice Cream (our strawberry ice cream is one of the most difficult flavors to master, we’ve created a sort of jam base to the ice cream in addition to studding it with farm-fresh strawberries. Its flavor is exquisite.) along the rim of the fluted glass will be placed a quartered strawberry, representing each blood-surged chamber of the heart that palpitates madly when entranced by the spell of a lover’s glare.

That’s about all there is this go-around, dear readers. We wish that Love, in all its sacred manifestations, we will be with you, and that you will be with it. For Love cannot perish, only transform. For what force constructs the blossom and its sweet fragrance from the cold and chaos? Love itself.

It is better to find Love in peril than peril in Love,
The Franklin Fountain