DATE: Tuesday, May 16

TIME: 3-4:30 p.m.

WHAT: Tasting and judging for the ninth annual UMass Amherst Food Science - Herrell’s Ice Cream & Bakery Ice Cream Competition

WHERE: Integrative Learning Center, Room S211, 650 N. Pleasant St., UMass Amherst 

WHO: The event is open to the media and ice cream aficionados.

For their capstone project in a product development course, four teams of UMass Amherst food science students, most of them seniors and all of them food science majors, will have their newly developed ice cream flavors tasted and judged by Herrell’s Ice Cream & Bakery representatives.

Students and other ice cream lovers are invited to the competition to sample the flavors and vote on a crowd favorite.

The Food Science Department is partnering for the fourth consecutive year with Judy Herrell, owner of the Herrell’s Ice Cream & Bakery, who mentored the class throughout the semester. She typically produces and promotes at her popular ice cream shop in downtown Northampton many of the flavors the students develop, starting with the winning flavor.

“The students are really trying to stretch their imagination,” Herrell says of this year’s group. They’re doing that by focusing on the “science of ice cream,” she adds.

The product development course is taught this year by UMass Amherst alumna Peiyi Shen, a Ph.D. graduate of the food science program. “I ask the students to be as creative as they can – to think big and put different ideas into practice,” Shen says.

Many of the student teams are following a trend in the industry – no additives or dyes and nothing too fancy even as they develop original, out-of-the-box flavors. “People want their ice cream to be all-natural,” Shen says. “Sometimes, less is better.”