A dream assignment for the sweet-toothed has seen a group of Massey Auckland food technology students sweep the Open Creative category of the 2008 New Zealand Ice-cream Awards.

It is the first time students from the university’s food and technology programme have entered the event, with all four entries winning gold or silver awards for near-perfect gelatos.

Food technology lecturer Kay McMath says the students’ success was “a real coup” as they were up against ice-cream industry professionals from companies such as Tip Top, as well as professional chefs and caterers.

All entries begin with a perfect score of 100 points, and marks are deducted for defects across 39 criteria, such as uneven ripples, air spaces in the container and flavour mishaps. Gold award certificates go to entries with 98 to 100 points, and silver to entries with 96 to 97.9 points.

Jane Wilson and Al Chen won gold for their Pink Lady gelato flavoured with cherry, coconut and stracchiatella (vanilla and chocolate flakes) and Anthony Light also won gold for his combination of cappuccino, stracchiatella with ganache rib ripple. Ray Li and Anthony Derrick won silver for Black Night – a rich unison of chocolate and cherry, while Bon Jin Koo won silver for a traditional Italian tiramisu gelato.

The six fourth-year students at the Institute of Food, Nutrition and Human Health created the gelato range as part of a product development project requiring them to come up with an indulgently healthy snack for either children or adults.

They carried out focus group research to identify flavours consumers preferred then developed prototypes for entry in the awards, organised by the New Zealand Ice-cream Manufacturers’ Association.

Clinton Fewtrell, a former chef and now business manager for dairy and meat ingredient supplier company Prolux NZ, supplied the students with an Italian gelato machine as well as imported Italian ingredients and flavourings and technical expertise on how to make gelato.

Gelato is the Italian word for ice-cream, but it is made with lower-fat milk than standard New Zealand ice-cream, Mr Fewtrell says.

The essence of gelato is to use good quality ingredients and not to over-churn the mixture before freezing it, he says.

Mrs McMath, who is chief judge of the ice-cream awards, says the international judging criteria is very strict and is completed anonymously.

As a regular judge of the awards, which were introduced in 1997 and presented at the annual conference held in Christchurch this year, Mrs McMath and three other judges sampled more than 200 ice-creams, gelatos and sorbets. Frozen fare ranged from the divine to the disgusting – with chilli and corn being one of the stranger flavour combinations for ice-cream, and blue cheese and pear ice-cream one of the more original entries, Waxy textures and rancid nuts made the judging task less than mouth-watering at times, she says.

The Open Creative category is the only one open to entries that are not commercially available. Mrs McMath says the students’ success was applauded by the industry and will be a great stepping stone into their future careers in the food industry.