UW’s Babcock Dairy creates anniversary ice cream flavor
MADISON — Each day the cows housed on the sprawling University of Wisconsin-Madison campus supply milk to the Babcock Hall Dairy Plant that produces signature dairy products for the school and surrounding community.
Together with cows from neighboring farms, the bovines produce nearly 1,500 gallons of milk that is delivered daily to the dairy plants on Linden Drive where half is used to produce 400 gallons of ice cream, with the rest going to cheese production and bottled milk.
Best known among students, locals and alumni is its signature ice cream, and officials claim the standard recipe hasn’t changed since the plant churned out its first batch in 1951.
“Our recipes are really unique. A few years back we had a panel comparing our original ice cream mixture to other potential recipes we were trying out, and the current recipe we’re using came out on top,” said Caroline Crowley, communications specialist for the Babcock Dairy Store. “They nailed it back in 1951, and we’re not going to mess with perfection.”
Earlier this year, university officials celebrated the completion of a major
Workers at UW-Madison’s Babcock Hall Dairy Plant are busy mixing batches of 175 S’more Years, the commemorative ice cream flavor for the University of Wisconsin’s 175th anniversary celebration. The winning entry features rich chocolate ice cream with a marshmallow swirl and graham cracker crunch. construction project for Babcock Hall, the heart of the university’s dairy product research and training. Scott Rankin, professor and chair at the University of Wisconsin’s Food Science Department, says before the renovation, the dairy plant had been largely unchanged since it was commissioned in 1951.
“The recent construction project was designed to give us a modern facility and has greatly improved. our ability to manage the manufacturing process and is much more efficient and more reflective of what current manufacturing is doing today.”
While the plant does produce the ice cream that is sold in the Babcock Dairy Store and at locations on campus and at area retailers, Rankin says the facility is a teaching venue for professionals who come to get training in dairy manufacturing and the students who work in the dairy plant.
Babcock Hall is also home to the Center for Dairy Research which provides more than 22 dairy short courses, as well as the use of the dairy plant for dairy product innovation. Each year the research center works with more than 300 dairy-related Wisconsin, national and international companies on various projects and training courses that help to move the industry forward.
Rankin says the beauty of the small production facility is that it offers a great deal of flexibility and many teaching and product development opportunities.
“The plant is a teaching venue and designed with the opportunity to have some human controls of the process,” he said. “Rather than students walking in and pushing a button, they’re at the helm of the ice cream freezer or cheese vat so they can have some hands-on
experience.”
“If we want to make 20-30 gallons of one flavor of ice cream or 20-30 gallons of another,” he added, “we have that flexibility.”
While making what he believes is the best ice cream is a point of pride for Dairy Plant Manager Casey Whyte, he enjoys the opportunity to work with students inside the plant.
“They are the future of the dairy industry and being able to teach them processing techniques and passing on the knowledge for them to take into the workforce is really important to me,” Whyte said.
Since the plant turned out its first batch of ice cream in 1951, Babcock Hall Dairy Plant officials have crafted 200 different flavors.
From popular staples of vanilla and chocolate to more creative concoctions like Union Utopia (a scoop of vanilla ice cream infused with swirls of peanut butter, caramel and fudge), ice cream fans have plenty to choose from at the student-staffed Babcock Dairy Store, located in the same building as the dairy plant.
Whyte says each day’s run of flavors is determined by the season, customer demand and inventory needs. The plant churns out about 400 gallons of finished ice cream each day which is packaged in sizes ranging from 8ounce individual cups to 3-gallon containers.
“We lived on the UW research farm that my dad managed between 1950 (and) 1960. We had a huge sub-zero freezer in our utility room and once we discovered Babcock Dairy ice cream we always had a one-gallon container in that freezer,” said Anna Lee Landen.
Whyte believes the ice cream is so popular because it is a high-quality premium product made in small batches.
“It’s really hard to beat fresh, locally produced ice cream,” Whyte said.
Crowley, who manages the store’s email, says she fields several requests for new flavors, which she passes on to Whyte.
“The most interesting request was for sunflower seed ice cream. That person said we made it about 15 years ago and wanted us to bring it back,” Crowley said. “If we’ve sourced those ingredients before and have the recipe in file, it shouldn’t be too difficult. But if we’ve never made it before it might be harder to come up with than our average flavor.”
Rankin says bringing a new flavor to production isn’t as easy as it sounds.
“It’s a lot of work to get a new product from idea to completion; it means sourcing ingredients, different labeling, allergen declarations and cleaning protocols to name a few,” Rankin said. “We’re a little bit conservative but we like to be able to make some unique things using Wisconsin products like our milk and cherries that make our products pretty special.”
To celebrate the university’s demisemiseptcentennial (175th anniversary), UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin asked Rankin and his team to create a new flavor to mark the historic milestone.
“For a specialty project like this, we worked with the chancellor’s committee on prototypes. They can suggest different colors, more flavorings or add-ins,” Rankin said.
Selecting the commemorative ice cream was left in the hands of the public. Voters were asked to choose one of four flavors in an online poll back in October. Crowley said 8,438 votes were cast during a short, one-week window. Choices included “175 S’more Years,” “Demi-Semi-Confetti,” “Demi-SemiSweet-Centennial” and “Flamingos on the Hill.”
Fans selected 175 S’more Years for the winning flavor, which includes rich chocolate ice cream with a marshmallow swirl and graham cracker crunch.
“It’s been flying off the shelves,” Crowley said. “They’ll have to make another batch soon.”
While the tried and true quality and flavors of the ice cream remains the same, Crowley says Babcock Dairy decided to rebrand its product and sign.
“UW Athletics has full licensing for the image of Bucky so we did a rebranding of our logo and sign out front,” Crowley said. “It’s been a good change as I think our old logo was a little outdated.”
Despite the ice cream being available at several locations and sporting events across the campus, Crowley says the actual ice cream store and adjacent plant that manufactures the product is a bit of a hidden gem, nestled in the agricultural cluster of buildings just south of Lake Mendota.
“A lot of students don’t know we’re here, but the students from the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences (CALS) often stop in for ice cream between classes,” Crowley said. “We’re connected right to the dairy plant with the ice cream coming straight out of the plant’s doors and into the store.”
Alumni Michael Huelskamp lived at Sullivan Hall for both his freshman and sophomore years and was a regular customer.
“Babcock Hall was just a few blocks away so I stopped several times (to get ice cream) during my stay and had some of the best vanilla ice cream ever made,” said Michael Huelskamp. “I still don’t think I have found any place that has ice cream that tastes as good as Babcock.”