It’s sweet, it’s orange, and it’s here while supplies last: pumpkin ice cream is now available at Ferdinand’s Ice Cream Shoppe.
The first step in making pumpkin ice cream is mixing the ingredients together: raw milk, cream, sugar, dry milk, corn syrup solids, and a stabilizer.
They’re mixed into the pasteurizer vat and the soon-to-be ice cream is pasteurized. Pasteurization is a process where mild heat is used to treat products to help eliminate pathogens and extend the product’s shelf life.
Next, the mix goes through a homogenizer to break up the butter fat, and then to a plate cooler to cool the mix to 40 degrees Fahrenheit. The ice cream mix stays in a cold mix tank overnight, and different inclusions are added to the mix to produce the different flavors.
“For the pumpkin, we measure out the precise amount of ice cream mix and pumpkin ice cream base, and mix them together in the ice cream mix tank,” said WSU Creamery manager John Haugen.
The mixture goes through the freezing barrel and gets air added to it while it is being frozen to soft-serve consistency. Once it is put into a three gallon tub, it’s moved to the Creamery’s -20 Fahrenheit freezer to harden.
“When it’s time to scoop, we put the ice cream mix in our tempering cabinet overnight to warm up to scooping temperature, between 0 and 5 degrees Fahrenheit,” said Haugen.
To see the season ice cream flavors available at Ferdinand’s, visit the ice cream shoppe website.