The Twentieth New Zealand Ice Cream Awards

Entries now open

The Ice Cream Awards, which were instituted in 1997, will again be held this year.

The specific objective of the Awards is the raising of standards and promoting the quality of New Zealand Ice Cream. The results will be announced at the Annual Conference in Auckland on Thursday, 26 May 2016.

Each Category will be sponsored by an Associate Member of the Ice Cream Manufacturers Association.  The categories and sponsors of the 2016 New Zealand Ice Cream Awards are:

Standard Vanilla Ice Cream, Alto Packaging Ltd
Standard Ice Cream, Invita NZ Ltd
Best of Caramel, Huhtamaki
Premium Vanilla Ice Cream, Eurofins
Premium Ice Cream, Chelsea Sugar
Open Creative, Formula Foods
Kids Choice, Pacific Flavours & Ingredients Ltd
Export Ice Cream, Fonterra NZ Ltd
Gelato,  Majors Group
Sorbet , Sensient
Low Fat, Thermaflo
“New to Market” Award, Hawkins Watts

Mrs Kay McMath is again the Chief Judge. Judging will take place at The FoodBowl, Auckland in early May.  The ’Kids’ Choice’ category will again be judged by local school children.

The closing date for entry forms is Friday, 15 April 2016.

Email  info@nzicecream.org.nz

Website      www.nzicecream.org.nz

Missed the results of the Champion of Cheese Awards?

Here are my highlights.

Congratulations to Puhoi Valley Cheese for winning Champion of Champions, and the Thermaflo Champion Washed Rind Cheese Award among a number of awards(yummy!)

More information at http://www.nzsca.org.nz/cheese-awards/

Countdown Champion of Champions Cheese Award

Puhoi Valley Kawau Blue, Puhoi Valley Cheese

Puhoi Valley Champion Artisan Cheese Award

Mercer Extra Mature Gouda, Mercer Cheese

Milk Test NZ Champion Cheesemaker Award

Jeanne van Kuyk, Aroha Organic Goat Cheese

Food for Chefs Champion Butter Award, Westgold Unsalted Butter - Westland Milk Products

NZ Chefs Association Champion Sheep Cheese Award, Mercer Pecorino – Mercer Cheese

Thermaflo Champion Washed Rind Cheese Award, Puhoi Valley Cellar Range Washed Rind – Puhoi Valley Cheese

Tetra Pak Champion Cheddar Cheese Award, Kapiti Tuteremoana Cheddar – Fonterra Brands NZ

Renco New Zealand Champion Export Cheese Award, Puhoi Valley Fresh Goat – Puhoi Valley Cheese

New World Champion Favourite Cheese Award, Kapiti Kahurangi - Fonterra Brands NZ.

More information at http://www.nzsca.org.nz/cheese-awards/

A pat on the back for NZ fisheries management

New Zealand ranks among the world’s top five best managed fisheries, according to Professor Ray Hilborn from the University of Washington.

Hilborn, a Professor in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences specialises in resource management and conservation and has been visiting New Zealand in a professional capacity since the early 1990s.

He has praised New Zealand’s Quota Management System (Now in its 30th year) saying that New Zealand’s fisheries management is among the best in the world. He was involved with a global study of the 28 largest fishing countries around the world.

The results, presented at the Seaweb Seafood Summit 2016 in Malta, showed that New Zealand came in among the top five countries with a score of nine out of 10.

The SeaWeb Seafood Summit brings together global representatives from the seafood industry with leaders from the conservation community, academia, government and the media.

Hilborn is the co-author of several books including “Overfishing: What Everyone Needs to Know” in 2012, “Quantitative Fisheries Stock Assessment” in 1992, and “The Ecological Detective: confronting models with data” in 1997 and has published over 200 scientific peer-reviewed reports.

Stealth reformulation by Kraft Heinz in US 

Kraft Heinz is ready to promote a major ingredient switch after what could be called the world's biggest blind taste test.

Last April, Kraft said it would soon refresh the ingredients in its iconic macaroni and cheese to appeal to today's clean label-minded consumers.

Removing artificial flavors, preservatives and synthetic colors without dramatically changing the taste, color and texture took years. The final recipe was ready in 2015. Instead of boasting, the brand opted to quietly overhaul the ingredient list on the side of the famous blue box. It sold more than 50 million boxes after the switch was made in December, and waited to see if any consumers noticed.

Few did.

Now, Kraft Heinz is ready to shout about the change with a campaign that plays on the idea that "it's changed but it hasn't."

The campaign speaks in broad strokes, rather than pointing out ingredient swaps such as using paprika, annatto and tumeric for color instead of Yellow 5 and Yellow 6. Kraft wants to appeal to both current buyers and lapsed buyers, who either stopped buying boxed macaroni and cheese or switched to smaller rival brands such as Annie's Homegrown from General Mills.