The making of North Star Apple Crisp ice cream

ST. PAUL, Minn. — To celebrate its 175th anniversary, the University of Minnesota is whipping up a special treat that honors both its own legacy and the state’s rich history: North Star Apple Crisp ice cream. The new flavor — featuring a vanilla base swirled with aronia berry jelly, apple chunks and toasted oat crumbles — is being churned right on campus, bringing together departments, staff and students.

In April, the university announced a contest inviting students, faculty, alumni and supporters to submit their ideas for an ice cream honoring its 175 years. After several weeks, over 500 entries were received, leaving those at the Joseph J. Warthesen Food Processing Center, also known as the Pilot Plant, to narrow down the options.

“I took that list of 500, and each had populated cells on a spreadsheet that I could go through and see the names and then what went in it,” Mitchell Maher, Pilot Plant manager, said. “We took it down to 12, and those were the ones we took to a small group.”

Maher said each ice cream idea included stories connecting it to the university or state of Minnesota, with the amount of creativity and inspiration proving impressive. The 12 ideas were narrowed down to five, with a panel of judges trying each ice cream to select the winner. However, no submissions included recipes or instructions, leaving Maher and his team to turn the ideas into a safe, sweet dessert.

“From that list of five, we made a couple gallons of each one in the lab,” Maher said. “There’s a lot of considerations when you start adding things into ice cream.”

North Star Apple Crisp was announced as the 175th anniversary flavor Aug. 24 and will be made in the Pilot Plant, which conducts food product research along with dairy and cheese processing, in the food science and nutrition building on the St. Paul campus. Well-known for creating unique combinations for its Golden Gopher ice cream sold across campus — like Minnesota Sundae, a honey base with sunflower seeds — staff at the Pilot Plant were prepared to begin.

“We had to source all the ingredients and figure out how to make those inclusions and those prototypes,” Maher said.

Paul and Heather Wright, dairy farmers from Hutchinson, submitted the winning idea. The couple’s 10 acres of organic aronia berries on their farm served as inspiration for the flavor. For Maher, finding a source for the Midwest-native berries seemed to fall into his lap.

“(The Wrights) have aronia berries they grow and send off to a processing facility where they get washed, stemmed and quick frozen,” Maher said.

The other components tie directly to the University of Minnesota, with the dairy coming from the campus herd, the apples representing the university’s history in apple breeding and the oats reflecting grain genetics research conducted by the university. To ensure the combination, consistency and taste of the ingredients worked well together, Maher created several variations until it was perfected.

“There’s the art side of balancing flavors…but then there’s the science side of it,” he said.

The aronia berries required the production team to cook them with sugar, which lowered the freezing point to ensure the fruit wouldn’t freeze into rock-hard bits. From there, they managed the acidity so the berries would keep their punch without becoming too overwhelming. Staff also ran the berries through a homogenizer to grind the skins, helping the jelly swirl become smooth, not gritty.

The oat crumble went through its own trials; it was cooked with butter and sugar until it caramelized, keeping it crunchy instead of soggy. Staff had to decide whether the crumble would contain wheat or flour as well.

After each step, Maher said they balanced pH levels for food safety and monitored moisture levels, which helped components not turn icy. Additionally, the production team had to be careful adding liquids like juice, as they can change fat and solid compositions.

“If you start adding a bunch of things in, you still need to make sure you’re hitting the right compositions — whether that’s labeling requirements for nutritionals or your minimum standard of identity to be called ice cream,” Maher said. “The pH can also get too low, and pretty soon, your ice cream mix starts to precipitate and almost starts making cheese.”

As new variations of North Star Apple Crisp were made, other researchers and staff visited to taste test and offer suggestions, helping bring the food science department together. Students are also a main aspect at the Pilot Plant, with undergraduates doing everything from making mix, filling cartons and tracking lot numbers to working in the salesroom, waxing and dipping cheeses and answering questions from customers. Graduate students use the space to expand lab work, collect data and solve real-world processing challenges.

“It’s something we’re proud of,” Maher said. “We have these capabilities to do scale-up work for graduate students doing a master’s project, but then also to even get the undergrads in the plant to do relevant real-world experience.”

North Star Apple Crisp will be available during the university’s Welcome Week, Homecoming Parade and 175th anniversary events. It can be found at many locations throughout the St. Paul campus, such as the Gopher Spot, the Meat and Dairy Salerooms and Goldy’s Gameroom.

The success of the contest is already sparking ideas for what new, unique ice cream could come next. Maher said other departments have reached out asking what it would take to name or create ice creams for special events. The Morris campus is also interested in potentially using milk from its cows, which produce A2A2 milk, for processing. A2 milk lacks a peptide that can cause digestive problems, possibly reducing inflammation and upset stomachs.

Some of the contest’s other final flavors — Father Pillsbury Puritan Pudding, The Maroon and Gold Rush and Minnesota Rouser Rhubarb — may return down the road. And with the first batch of North Star Apple Crisp nearly selling out in a week, Maher said the demand shows there’s plenty of appetite and opportunities for more university-made ice cream.

“The amount of reaction we’ve got is the biggest surprise,” Maher said. “We’re flattered that people are coming out to find it, but also a little panicked, like holy smokes, we need to make more ice cream.”