The Caltech Y’s Ice Cream Competition
This past Saturday the Caltech Y held the final part of the house ice cream competition. If you don’t know already, Caltech has eight houses: Avery, Blacker, Dabney, Fleming, Lloyd, Page, Ricketts, and Venerable. They each have a motto and house color(s). Tom Mannion, the Senior Director of Student Activities and Programs, had this great idea to hold a contest though the Y where each house designs an ice cream flavor, preferably in the theme of the house color, and students and judges will vote on which one is the best. Fosselman’s would make the custom-made ice cream for each house, and the Y would host the ice cream competition. Fosselman’s ice cream is a small local ice cream parlor that makes some of the best ice cream that I’ve tasted. They have ice cream flavors that you can’t find elsewhere and they’re not odd flavors like Philly cheesesteak, but flavors that just sound plain delicious, like almond mocha fudge. There are also the traditional flavors like chocolate and butter pecan. I like getting one of the plain flavors just so I can taste how rich and creamy it is compared to grocery store ice cream.
We decided to hold the contest in three rounds: two separate contests for the north houses and the south houses, where people could vote on the four ice creams, and then one big contest showcasing all eight flavors and a panel of judges would determine the winner. The houses that won the initial contest would get prize money for the house to go on a house trip of their choosing, and could win additional money at the final contest.
The first contest’s contenders: Avery - Red Bean Ice Cream with Mochi Lloyd - The Golden Ratio Page - Blueberry Steel Venerable - Blueberry Pie Ice Cream Some houses decided to give their recipe a name, but Lloyd’s was a caramel pretzel-containing ice cream, and Page’s was based on blueberry cheesecake. They all tasted delicious! Lloyd’s recipe won this round.
The second contest’s contenders: Fleming - Thunderberry Ricketts - Broken Cherry Dabney - Matcha Green Tea with Lemon Ice Cream Blacker - Black Sesame Ice Cream with Caramel Swirls Fleming’s ice cream had strawberry and cookie dough, while Ricketts’ had cherry and I think chocolate chips. Anyways, I love fruit-flavored ice cream, so I ate a ton of ice cream from those two houses. Blacker’s recipe won this round.
Blacker’s intimidating ice cream belied the fact that it was delicious. Finally, on Saturday we took out all of the ice cream at the same time so people could get their fix. Tom’s judges announced that the final winner was Lloyd, but I think everyone was just excited about the ice cream.
There was quite a long line at the final tasting! I think it helped that it was pretty hot that day.
A photo of some of the ice cream flavors. We ended up giving the leftover ice cream to the houses so they could enjoy their creations at their leisure.
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