Inside Iowa State

April 13, 2007

Yummy in the tummy

by Samantha Beres

Combining the sesquicentennial kick-off with Veishea will be a sweets lover's dream. Just consider birthday cake that requires 1,500 pounds of whipped, creamy frosting. Or the gallons of specialty "Cyclone Celebration" ice cream that call for 200 pounds of cardinal and gold sprinkles. And no Veishea is complete without those traditional cherry pies.

Preparing to serve 20,000 pieces of birthday cake is no small task, said Hy-Vee cake designer Mathew Mattox. A team of about a dozen people from Ames' two Hy-Vee stores will put in a total of 35 work hours to make this cake - 14 for preparation and baking and 21 for decorating and finishing.

Fortunately, the Lincoln Center Hy-Vee has a walk-in oven that can bake up to 30 sheet cakes at a time and a 20-gallon mixing bowl that makes 100-pound batches of frosting. The marble cake will be served in Beardshear Hall after the parade until 4:30 p.m. or until it's gone.

If you want ice cream with that cake, it's a short jaunt over to the Dairy Science Club tent. "Cyclone Celebration" ice cream was developed by the group especially for the university's birthday kickoff. It's an ultra creamy, cake batter-flavored ice cream with cardinal and gold sprinkles mixed into it, modeled after the popular birthday cake flavors marketed by big producers such as Cold Stone Creamery.

Early versions, featuring chocolate or specialty add-ins, were tried and discarded. After many more rounds of sampling to get the right mix, the final product was introduced to sesquicentennial organizers in March. The flavor received rave reviews - evidenced by an empty bucket - and production is under way.

Club members expect to have 5,000 servings of the ice cream available on Veishea Saturday. Hand-dipped cups of the concoction will be sold for $2 from a tent southeast of Beardshear. In addition, the club will offer its usual lineup of ice cream flavors (chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, Oreo and Snickers) from its location in Kildee Hall.

For those who want to stagger their sugar intake, cherry pies will be available starting Friday. The cherry pie tradition started more than 80 years ago and these delectable little desserts have been called a "common denominator" that students, alums and people in the area affiliate with Iowa State.

The logistics of cherry pie making are complicated, said Tearoom coordinator and Veishea cherry pie adviser John Kramer. About 11,000 pie shells and "enough" cherry filling are made in the Knapp-Storms kitchen and bakery. Food Stores trucks transport the shells and filling to Friley, where shells go into the freezer and filling into the fridge. Then it's all trucked to the Tearoom in MacKay for assembly.

While much doesn't change from year to year (why change a good thing?), this time around, Kramer said there may be more "bang for the buck." This year, shells will be a little smaller, but there will be more pie filling. The price? Still a dollar. Proceeds support HRIM scholarships.

Cherry pies

Tearoom, 16 MacKay, $1, April 20, 8 a.m.-4 p.m.; April 21, 8 a.m. until sold out

Sesquicentennial birthday cake

Beardshear Hall, free, after parade, until gone

Cyclone Celebration ice cream

Dairy Science Club tent, $2, noon-4:30 p.m.