LIFE

What is Cookies 'n Cream ice cream? Here's why this flavor is a South Dakota food favorite

Makenzie Huber
Argus Leader

This article is one of 18 South Dakota food favorites. For the complete list, go here.

Cookies 'n Cream ice cream: Vanilla ice cream mixed with chocolate sandwich cookies, arguably first created at South Dakota State University. 

South Dakota State University is one of a handful to claim they invented cookies and cream ice cream. 

But there's no way to prove it. 

The first batch of  cookies and cream ice cream made at SDSU was in 1979 when Shirley Seas, manager at the campus dairy plant, asked two students to buy Oreos from a nearby grocery story and add them to the ice cream they were making that day. 

"We're both kind of looking at him with puzzlement in our faces, and he says 'I have an idea for a new ice cream flavor, and I want you guys to make the first batch," Joe Leedom, one of the students who helped create the first batch, told the Argus Leader in 2017. 

A flavor is born: SDSU's claim to cookies-and-cream ice cream

Seas told Leedom that he'd had the idea when he was served ice cream with cookie crumbles on top a few months before. They "pretty much cleared" the grocery store of their Oreo cookies in stock and put the cookies into a fruit feeder to crush them.  

Now, the SDSU Davis Dairy Plant produces 4,300 gallons of cookies and cream ice cream annually, which is 10% of their total ice cream produced. 

Texas Blue Bell claims on its website that it's the "first to create this innovative flavor." The company applied to register the trademark "Cookies 'n Cream" in 1981. Edy's ice cream website claims they invented the flavor in 1982. 

But for SDSU students and alumni, there's no contest. 

The top 18 South Dakota foods