St. Albans has a new place for ice cream, and it’s all made in-house. Mad Ice Cream, which opened the weekend of June 13 at 20 Lake Street, will serve small-batch scoops, sundaes and milkshakes year-round.
Mother-daughter duo Karen and Madison Barchowski churn creative hard ice cream flavors such as My Name Is Earl (Grey Tea), blueberry cheesecake, chocolate-peanut butter, strawberry, espresso-maple chip, and Chocolate & Caramel & Pretzels Oh My.
Ingredients are local when possible, Karen said, and most sauces and inclusions such as cookie dough are homemade, as are the waffle cones. Even the blue Cookie Monster ice cream uses naturally blue spirulina for its color.
“We believe in really clean, clean ingredients,” Karen said. “Nothing you can’t pronounce.”
The Barchowskis owned an oceanside ice cream business in Florida, Sally’s Ice Cream, for 10 years. Madison worked there from an early age, she said, and was its longtime general manager. They moved to Vermont in 2022 and bought Burlington’s Revolution Kitchen, which they ran for six months.
“We decided this is what we wanted to do,” Karen said. “We love St. Albans. It’s what we’re used to: a smaller community with a lot of small businesses.”
Mad Ice Cream will always offer a dairy-free option in its lineup — currently a mango sorbet — and gluten-free cones are available. The Barchowskis plan to rotate some of the shop’s 10 flavors in the future, once they learn which are most popular. Right now, they’re all tied, Karen said. ➆
This article appears in June 24 • 2026.
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