MOO-ville Creamery’s ice cream has been named the best in America for the second year in a row.
It was chocolate last year. This time, vanilla.
MOO-ville won first place at the national ice cream contest.
At the annual convention of the North American Ice Cream Association, the creamery from Nashville, Michigan, won an award for the second time in as many years. This year, the convention was in Fort Worth, Texas, from November 7 to 11.
“We weren’t as surprised as we were last year, but with a new university and a new judging panel, you never really know what to expect,” MOO-ville Creamery’s Troy Westendorp said. “We were happy and a little bit shy at the same time. It’s just a lot of fun.”
Like last year with chocolate, MOO-vanilla ville’s was the best ice cream in the category. It was one of five blue ribbon winners in the vanilla category.
The ice cream association, which has been around for 89 years, says that the number of blue, red, and white ribbons given out in each category is often different. This is because each flavour of ice cream is judged based on what the national standards for that flavour should be.
Each sample is judged in eight different ways, including its structure and how it feels, as well as its taste, texture, and colour. It also goes through melt tests and tests for bacteria.
“It takes a lot of work, and they take it pretty seriously when they judge,” Westendorp said.
He thinks that the way MOO-ville makes its ice cream naturally may give it an edge.
“Since we have our own dairy farm, we plant the crops that feed our cows. The cows give us milk, which we turn into ice cream. We are in charge of every step of the process from beginning to end,” he said.
Westendorp’s parents, Doug and Louisa Westendorp, started the dairy farm in 2005. They make ice cream with granulated sugar instead of corn syrup and use 20–25% more butter fat than their competitors.
The ice cream maker said that the recipe makes the taste fuller.
This year, the chocolate flavour, which is made with double dark and maroma terracotta chocolates from South America, did not get the highest score, but it did get a blue ribbon again.
Last year, Westendorp missed the convention and competition because his wife was having their second daughter. This year, he was able to go.
If MOO-ville wins another blue ribbon in Las Vegas in 2023, they will get the Grandmaster Ice Cream Award. Any creamery or dairy farm that gets a blue ribbon in three out of four years gets the award.
They just entered the traditional chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry flavours into the association’s clinical competitions, but they have a total of 60 flavours to choose from that they could enter into other categories.
Westendorp said that last year’s success brought in a lot of new business, which led to the creamery putting in a new production line in the spring.
The farm now has 25 full-time workers who work there all year and another 40 people who work there during the spring and summer. As it gets better, it might need more help.
“We definitely saw a pretty big increase in wholesale accounts last year,” Westendorp said. “Places that wanted ice cream and came looking for us.” “We’re always happy to talk to anyone who wants to sell our ice cream.”
MOO-ville ice cream is sold seasonally in shops around Battle Creek, Lansing, Grand Rapids, and Kalamazoo, as well as at MOO-four ville’s stores.
It can be found at Schultz’s Treat Street in Kalamazoo, Michigan, all year long.
