MSU
For Hunter Gartner and his teammates, creating Minute Escape, a pie à la mode dish, was not as easy as pie.
Minute Escape is an all-in-one apple pie and custard ice cream dessert prepared in one minute by microwaving it.
Gartner, a recent graduate, used patent-pending technology he designed to heat the pie up while keeping the ice cream portion of the product frozen.
“It’s an interesting, intriguing concept to think that you can throw ice cream into the microwave and that it will be kept frozen,” alumna and team member Rebecca Watts said.
The product was created to compete in the Institute of Food Technologists’, or IFT, National Product Development competition.
IFT is a nonprofit scientific society whose members are professionals engaged in food science and technology.
One of the main purposes of the competition is to afford food industry representatives the opportunity to spot talented students for potential employment, IFT’s director of media relations Mindy Weinstein said in an email.
Minute Escape took first place out of six finalists in the competition, which took place in New Orleans June 11-14.
“Finding out that we won, there was a huge sense of pride,” Watts said.
