UMass Amherst 10th Annual Ice Cream Competition: Herrell’s to Produce All Four Craft Flavors

For the second consecutive year, the premium craft ice cream flavors created in the annual UMass Amherst Food Science-Herrell’s Ice Cream & Bakery Ice Cream Product Development Competition were each so luscious and innovative that Herrell’s vows to produce and sell all four of them at its popular Northampton store.

Audience members tasted two-ounce cups of the ice cream flavors, including Pineapple Upside Down Cheesecake, which was announced as the audience’s favorite flavor. Coming out on top was Brown Butter Miso Caramel, painstakingly created with made-from-scratch caramel and brown bits of cooked butter, cutting the buttery fat with nonfat dried milk and punctuating the flavor with hand cut chunks of dark chocolate.

What made it so special? “It was the combination of flavor and olfactory,” Herrell said. “You could smell the brown butter when it was frozen. Then, when you tasted the brown butter, it really pushed it over the edge.” The winning group was food science majors from Massachusetts: Victoria Cercone of Concord, Adam Forbes of Arlington and Ethan Walton of Holden.

Charmaine Koo, instructor of the food processing lab who organized the competition, was impressed with all the flavors. “The idea of combining miso and caramel – that’s not mainstream.”