Bringing a New Ben & Jerry's Flavor to Life, Step by Step

After seeing what we had to work with — items available at the local supermarket were also allowed — our group threw around a few ideas. We immediately zeroed in on a maple base, as we lamented that Ben & Jerry's doesn't currently have a maple flavor in its lineup. A maple bacon doughnut flavor was considered, but we feared the bacon wouldn't retain its crunch. Instead, we decided on a maple-vanilla base with speculoos swirl (because, cookie butter) and for the crunch factor, either French Toast Crunch cereal or Biscoff cookies, depending on what the flavor gurus could track down on short notice.

All Ben & Jerry's flavors begin with either a sweet cream or chocolate base, which is then left as is or enhanced with purees or extracts. In our case, that meant tinkering with sweet cream (a mixture of heavy cream, condensed skim milk, and liquid cane sugar) by adding maple syrup and vanilla until it tasted just right. As we adjusted, tasted, and adjusted again, we decided it could benefit from a hint of salt and a splash of alcohol. Enter flavor guru Eric's killer salted brown butter bourbon base, a component of a yet-to-be-released flavor.

After melting down the butter and booze concoction, we stirred it in and once again tasted and tweaked until the base was well-rounded.

Just like when making ice cream at home, the base is then partially frozen to a thick soft-serve-like consistency before any chunks or swirls are added (lest they sink to the bottom). The main difference here: the flavor lab's ice cream machine is much cooler (both literally and figuratively) than your average home model. This magical machine chilled and churned our batch in about eight minutes.

Ever wonder how the swirl is evenly distributed in each pint? At the factory level, a machine called a variegator injects the swirl into the ice cream base. At the lab level, flavor gurus (or in this case, our team) add the base to an enormous piping bag so that it can be simultaneously squeezed into an ice cream tub with the swirl component of choice.

Once the ice cream base and swirl bags were exhausted, the container was topped off with a lid and immediately whisked away to a ridiculously cold freezer (we're talking -40°F). The subzero temperature ensures that the ice cream freezes up nearly-ice-crystal-free, a large part of why commercial ice cream has a creamier texture than home batches do.

"Chili Today, Hot Tamale," cinnamon ice cream with a spicy Mexican chocolate swirl and blondie mini doughnuts.

Peanut butter ice cream with blondie chunks and a salted caramel peanut butter pecan swirl.

Vanilla ice cream with shredded coconut, dual swirls of caramel and coconut, banana chunks, and cookie pieces.