January 19th, 2007 | Category: General
ASK ERNIE: THE CASE OF THE DISAPPEARING CHERRIES
Posted by: Turkey Hill Team
Richard S. from Joppa, Maryland writes:
Dear Ernie,
Why is it that some ice cream containing fruit contains more fruit than other containers of the same brand and flavor? Like my Turkey Hill Cherry Orchard Limited Edition. My sister's product had gobs of cherries and mine had hardly any. What's up with that, Ern?
Sorry about the lack of cherries, Richard. Here's what may have happened.
Fruits, nuts, candies, cookies and all of what I call the “good stuff” is added to the soft frozen, flavored ice cream through an ingredient feeder. The good stuff is added to a hopper where it delicately slides down into a turning auger carrying it to a spinning star wheel where it is deposited into the ice cream. The combination of ice cream and good stuff is then blended as it is added to the awaiting container. For product safety this is a closed system. Occasionally bridging occurs at the entrance to the auger, causing a shortage of good stuff in the ice cream. This, I suspect, is what happened to your disappearing cherries.
This process is monitored and recorded. As an additional safeguard, members of our Research & Development Team and Quality Assurance Team do ice cream cutting each and every day. They pull containers from the beginning and end of each batch to be tested for things like taste and texture. Then, they cut each container in half with a big knife to make sure all of the inclusions and ripples are dispersed properly.
Thanks for your question!
Ernie
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If you’ve got a technical question about the ice cream making process or some other inquiry about the nuances of America’s favorite treat, chances are Ernie has the answer. He might not be able to answer all questions, but he’ll try his best and some may be featured on the Ice Cream Journal.
10 Comments
Dear Ernie, Seems like your auger has more problems than that. I love your Light Strawberry Cheesecake Ice Cream, but I am always annoyed because the swirls of strawberry sauce/jam is only in about 1/4 of the box in the left bottom corner. ALWAYS. The rest of the box is pretty much plain cheesecake ice cream. The hunks of cheesecake are usually in good supply, but they are MOSTLY in the PLAIN SIDE, leaving little in w/the strawberry swirl side. This puts SO MUCH strawberry swirl in that one small area that it tastes disgusting and I usually throw it out or eat it in desparaion when the store is out of stock! Why can’t you disperse it evenly and spread the swirl through out? If I mix it myself the separation is lost and it just isn’t the same. I eat A LOT of icecream and I’d bet I buy at least 6-8 cartons per month and every single darn one is like this!! Maybe your quality control dept isn’t as good as you’d like t think? It’s too bad, because it is a good product. I can also add I DO love your NO SUGAR ADDED DUTCH CHOCOLATE, it’s te best low cal, no fat ice cream in chocolate going!! Wish you did the same with strawberry ice cream, either no sugar, no fat or a no fat yogurt, with PIECES of strawberry in it. That would be excellent! Up North in New England a good strawberry in low cal is non existant in any brand. Only Eddy’s comes close. You could check out Pubix’s strawberry frozen yogurt for the standard to aspire to, done like them but with Turkey Hlll’s ingredints, it would be an absolute winner! Thanks.
January 26th, 2007 at 4:29 pmWhat happens to the ice cream is actually interesting. Ernie will enlighten us all with an answer in an upcoming post.
PATRICIA - Thanks for your comment. Because some flavors use slightly more expensive ingredients, we’re faced a several options: 1) use cheaper, lower quality ingredients (which we’d never do), 2) keep the same package size but raise the price, or 3) make the package slightly smaller and keep the same price.
From surveys and focus groups with customers we learned that most people are comfortable with the smaller packages. In the end we hope that the taste of what’s inside far outweighs any difference in size. Hope this helps!
January 23rd, 2007 at 5:01 pmI see that Jessica above beat me to the question. What happens to the halves? They are not, heaven forfend, thrown away are they? If so, when’s a good time to come to stand by the trash can?
January 23rd, 2007 at 3:51 pmI’d rather pay for quality vs quantity. Go with a store brand if you want quantity
January 23rd, 2007 at 3:23 pmIs this new ice cream high test or is it lo-cal or fat-free?
January 23rd, 2007 at 2:18 pmIn our area we have not sen this new ice cream yet. Hope to see it soon, sound good, I like cherries.
January 22nd, 2007 at 8:00 pmYou put the icecream in smaller containers and we get charged the same amount as the larger was. Not nice Turkey Hill
January 22nd, 2007 at 5:49 pmI’d like to apply for the cutting and tasting of the ice cream!!
That’s sounds like a great job
January 19th, 2007 at 2:27 pmIt is an interesting image and you’re not too far off on the samurai sword! We’ll have to see if we can get some pictures of Ernie and the gang splitting some ice cream containers and post them here on the blog.
As for the leftovers, we’ll let Ernie handle that question in an upcoming “Ask Ernie” post (although I think we all know the unfortunate conclusion to that answer).
January 19th, 2007 at 2:23 pm“Then, they cut each container in half with a big knife to make sure all of the inclusions and ripples are dispersed properly.”
Wow - that part sounds like fun! Why am I imagining someone with a samurai sword?
Does the dissected ice cream then get thrown out, or does someone get to eat it?
January 19th, 2007 at 11:34 amThese comments are intended to be a discussion of the information presented in the blog postings. Any product-related questions or other issues not related to the post should be referred to our consumer response team through the link on our Contact Us page, as they are the true experts in answering any questions or concerns you may have about Turkey Hill and its products.
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