11
June
Here’s the inside scoop on how a School of Pharmacy alum created one of Babcock Dairy’s best-selling flavors
By Archer Parquette
If you’ve stopped by the Daily Scoop, which serves up Babcock Dairy Ice Cream at the Memorial Union, it’s hard to pass up a taste of the vanilla ice cream swirled with peanut butter, caramel, and fudge. But you probably didn’t know that you have a University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Pharmacy alum to thank for that sweet treat, known as Union Utopia.
Kim Lintner (PharmD ’01), now a clinical pharmacist with UW Health, was a recent graduate in 2003 when she heard that the Memorial Union was hosting an “Ice Cream Jubilee” in honor of its 75th anniversary. As part of the celebration, Babcock announced a contest to create and name its new flavor. Participants were asked to submit a list of ingredients and flavor combinations — along with a creative flavor name. The winner would be sold at Babcock that year.
“I enjoy cooking, I enjoy coming up with fun ideas, so it immediately piqued my interest,” Lintner says.
At the time, Lintner was training for a triathlon and she understandably found her mind drifting toward delicious relief during long training sessions.
“On hot summer days, I would think ‘What would taste really good when I get home from this bike ride?’” she says. Plenty of flavors went through her mind, but she eventually landed on a combination she calls “almost Snickers-like.”
She originally proposed a peanut butter ice cream base with caramel and fudge, but Babcock asked if she’d be willing to compromise her dessert vision and make it a vanilla ice cream base with peanut butter added as one of the toppings. She accepted the twist on her original vision.
Over 1,100 submissions were entered in the jubilee contest, but only five were chosen as finalists. Lintner was surprised to find that she’d made it in that 0.45% crew of ice cream greats.
They put the finalists to the taste test on the Terrace to select the cream of the crop. On a Friday afternoon in September, ice cream lovers from across the University gathered at the union for free samples of the five finalists: Terrace Chairy, Rathskeller Razzleberry, Never Terrace Apart, Der Banana Splitskeller, and Lintner’s Union Utopia.
Lines for the test ran so long that the tasting went 45 minutes past its scheduled end, according to the Badger Herald. And after hundreds of scoops were scooped, one ice cream was the clear crowd favorite — Union Utopia.
“I was shocked,” Lintner says.
Besides the sugary joy of having her own ice cream, Lintner also won a T-shirt, a half-gallon of ice cream and a red terrace chair.
Union Utopia quickly proved to be a hit. Originally, the contest-winning flavor was only going to be available for one year — but over two decades later, you’ll still see it on Babcock’s menu. That’s because Union Utopia remains one of the top selling flavors at Babcock today, racking up sales numbers alongside sweet stalwarts like chocolate chip and orange custard.
You can order Union Utopia with plenty of additional toppings, but Lintner thinks a scoop is best straight-up in a cone.
“My favorite sneaky thing to do is when I see someone getting ice cream at the Union, I ask them what flavor they’re going to get,” Lintner says. “When they say Union Utopia, I say, ‘Well, would you like to hear the story of that?’ One time, I told a grandpa and his grandkids, and they were like, ‘Oh my gosh. We just met an ice cream celebrity.’”
