Who Makes Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough?
Ben & Jerry's gets a whopping number of flavor suggestions from customers each year that include weird and wonderful combos like gorgonzola and jam to jalapeño and chocolate. However, it's the classic flavors, like cookie dough, that customers most adore for their comforting taste and creamy consistency. If you've ever wondered who makes the chocolate chip cookie dough that goes into Ben & Jerry's ice cream, it comes from Rhino Foods, an ice cream inclusion supplier based in Burlington, Vermont.
The married owners of Rhino Foods — Ted and Anne Castle — used to run a frozen custard business in the 1980s. As their small store was next door to a cookie shop, they began making ice cream sandwiches to draw in customers. In a stroke of luck, they witnessed the research and development team at Ben & Jerry's devising ways to incorporate cookie dough into their ice creams and offered their services.
"There's a lot of stories on who invented cookie dough ice cream," explains Ted Castle in a video on the Rhino Foods website. "Was it a customer? Was it a manager at the store? We don't claim that we came up with the idea. We claim that we were the ones who helped Ben & Jerry's figure out how to do it and put it into pints." In the end, it took a year and a half of trial and error for the team to figure out how to incorporate the cookie dough into the ice cream successfully.
Rhino foods took the time to make a freezable cookie dough with the perfect texture
According to the Ben & Jerry's website, the process took so long because they needed "a cookie dough that could hold up in freezing, ice cream temperatures and still be the sticky, smooshy, instantly identifiable cookie dough that we all love". Rhino Foods has supplied Ben & Jerry's with the same chocolate chip cookie dough since 1991 and has gone on to work with other ice cream businesses.
The manufacturer also makes other edible doughs, such as cookies and cream, gingerbread, and peanut butter jelly. You can even have a custom dough made with your own flavor ideas. However, the Rhino website states that all of these items are bulk-packaged specifically for "commercial use in manufacturing, retail ice cream shops, and quick-serve restaurants" with a two-palette minimum order, so you can't purchase a small amount for home use.
Making your own cookie dough ice cream is heaps of fun, but it does take a little time and patience because you have to prepare the cookie dough separately. A ready-made tub of Ben & Jerry's cookie dough ice cream hits that sweet spot without any of the leg work (that said, if you do want to whip up a homemade version, be sure to make use edible raw cookie dough recipe that's free of eggs so it's safe to eat).