Step aside, Cookies-n-Cream. Move over, Neapolitan. It's time to hit the (Rocky) Road.

For their winning project in Food Science 101, eight Cornell University students have developed an ice cream flavor with an evocative name, Sticky Bunz. Reminiscent of warm, gooey sticky buns fresh from the oven, this vanilla-based, cinnamon-flavored ice cream features butter crunchies, pecans and a caramel swirl. The students beat out three other course entries to create a product fit for a dean.

And for pleasing the professional palates of seven judges, the team will see its just desserts: The Cornell Dairy will create Sticky Bunz ice cream next spring and sell the flavor at the Cornell Dairy Bar and the Cornell Dairy Store.

"The final projects of my Food Science 101 class have evolved over the years," says Joe Hotchkiss, Cornell professor of food science. For the third straight year, the students gathered into teams, learned the science behind creating new food products and developed new ice cream flavors. "Overtly, the purpose of the class is to have experiential learning, to do something. But one of the covert purposes is to teach students how to work together in groups and work through the complex process of formulating a likeable ice cream," says Hotchkiss.

Thirty-five students in the class were divided into four teams. Early in the fall semester, each team developed an ice cream product concept and strategy. Besides Sticky Bunz, the groups created Cookie Commotion, Slumber Party and Granny Smith's Harvest Ice Cream. The Sticky Bunz group included: Evan Berk, junior, Bellmore, N.Y.; Lee Hoffman, junior, Granite Springs, N.Y.; Courtney Kenney, sophomore, Milton, Mass.; Sharon Poczter, sophomore, Glen Head, N.Y.; Darlene Robare, junior, Keeseville, N.Y.; Dan Sikka, sophomore, Williamsville, N.Y.; Christine Vleck, sophomore, Cortland, N.Y.; and Betty Sun, sophomore, Downers Grove, Ill.

Each team performed market research and decided which flavors likely would be popular. The class learned technical aspects of commercial ice-cream processing, such as how

much milk-fat content would be acceptable to the discriminating palate, how much overrun (air content) to put into it and how much particulate (crunchy tidbits) to use both to keep manufacturing costs low enough to realize a profit and to keep the ice cream from clogging the machines in the Cornell food science plant.

Hotchkiss taught the students that overrun is perhaps the most important ice cream ingredient. Simply, it is air that foams the cream and keeps the ice cream from becoming a rich, frozen, flavored butter. The student teams held their product between 75 and 85 percent overrun, which made it rich and premium. Also, the ice creams were about 15 percent milk fat -- again on the heavy side.

The students who made Granny Smith's Harvest Ice Cream were brave enough to experiment by adding chopped, New York state-grown Granny Smith apples as their particulate. Sadly, during the super-freezing stage, which immediately follows the ice cream-making process, water crystals formed on the apple particulate, destroying the taste.

Daryl B. Lund, dean of Cornell's New York State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, showed up unannounced at the final project's Nov. 30 judging and sampled all four flavors. After a few bites of Slumber Party, a vanilla ice cream filled with chocolate-covered pretzels, caramel fudge swirl and fudge chunks, the dean exclaimed in the quiet classroom, "Hey, this Slumber Party's a good one!"

With hopes of a good grade on her mind, senior Amy Hutton of Kennett Square, Pa., a co-creator of Slumber Party, responded to the dean, "Yeah!"

Then the dean smiled back and replied to her, "But, I've got no influence around here."