The College Course on Ice Cream

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to learn more about ice cream. If you are a big fan of the sweetest of sweet treats, you might find ice cream education to be interesting.

It turns out, one major university offers an actual course in ice cream.

This is no new course at Penn State University. The university has a famous creamery with a rich history. It’s the largest university creamery in the United States. The ice cream course is a short course offered under the University’s College of Agricultural Sciences. Penn State says each year about 120 students from all over the world attend the course. It’s a seven-day program offered every January. And this is not some new course designed to attract attention to the school creamery. This is the 119th year of the course. It’s also thought to be the first continuing education course in the U.S.

To be honest, many of the students are more than just ice cream lovers. They are people who work in the ice cream industry. In fact, the students are often people from ice cream juggernauts like Ben and Jerry’s, Baskin Robbins, Blue Bell Creamery, Borden, Breyers, Colombo, Haagen-Dazs, Friendly, Dairy Queen and Nestle.

The program is designed to help those professionals better understand the nuances of ice cream manufacturing. Yup, for many people the ice cream business is, well…a business. During this year’s course, students will attend more than 20 workshops. They will learn about ice cream technology in the areas of flavoring, refrigeration, hardening techniques and freezing. There will also be workshops on the manufacturing of frozen yogurt and novelty frozen desserts.

Of course, if you just want to enjoy ice cream, you don’t need to take a college course. Just head down to your local ice cream shop and dig in. You can leave the notebook at home.