“You’ve also got to keep them from settling to the bottom of the machine’s hopper; they have to stay dispersed evenly throughout the mix. And then you’ve got to make sure—with something like pretzel pieces, for instance—that you don’t put them into the mix and find that they’ve dissolved after two days.”

Using a combination of ingredient choices, processing decisions and coatings to protect the inclusions’ texture and structural integrity, Van Horn and Gunter have figured out a way to make it work. The process has allowed them to develop profiles like red-velvet cupcake with chunks of real cream-cheese icing, the recently released salted-caramel pretzel, and the even newer cinnamon bun, with flavors that hit all parts of the palate.

“There’s obviously cinnamon in the product; there’s a dough flavor note,” Gunter said. “But when you eat a warm cinnamon bun, it’s got to have a buttery back note to it. And we worked on getting that for a long time.”

It’s a complex profile, he said, but it’s “got to be complex at the end of the day. It can’t be an extract and hit you all at once; that doesn’t work.”

Taking in the Big Picture

But complexity is part and parcel of delivering frozen yogurt, and it’s a feature manufacturers have to work into the base mixes themselves. As Gumabon said, “Yogurt companies also know that sometimes, to have a variety of product offerings, they cannot work with just one type of yogurt mix.”

In other words, if you’re aiming for a dessert-type profile, the base mix and cultures should yield less acidity and more sweetness in the finished yogurt. Meanwhile, you can boost richness with dairy fat. As an added bonus, the presence of fat helps flavor delivery, Gumabon said. Then again, too much fat can mask flavors. Thus, she advises treading a middle ground.

“We love working with the low-fat versions. For fat-free versions, we try to provide some creaminess through the addition of creamy flavors.”

The lesson: composition of the yogurt base is critical to flavor strategy. Even if two yogurt mixes’ measured acidities are equal, they might react differently with different flavors if made using different cultures, Gumabon said. Further, she notes that higher acid levels allow mild flavors to dissipate more quickly. Even sweetener type — natural versus artificial; liquid versus granulated — could point a yogurt maker to a different flavor than otherwise.

As to the effect of temperature, Gumabon said that it makes flavoring frozen yogurt similar to flavoring ice cream.

“The temperature and overrun affect the type and amount of flavors used,” she said. And flavor may release more quickly in soft-serve than in a hard-pack product, as the former warms up more immediately in the mouth. The softer texture “also helps add a creaminess perception to the overall flavor,” she said.

That’s why Gumabon said her company always works with the actual frozen yogurt mix when developing flavor bases. “We do our best to match the sweetness and acid level of the flavor bases to that of the yogurt mix. We use their liquid frozen yogurt, we flavor that and then we run the sample in the soft-serve machine. We also taste if flavors will hold up over time.”

Flavoring with a base instead of individual flavors also helps extend shelf life and “results in more innovative choices and improves texture,” she said. “For example, we always add real fruit for fruit bases and then enhance the experience with flavors. Sometimes we use a combination of ingredients and cooking process to develop innovative flavors or a creamy texture-flavor mix.”

How they do so is top secret, of course. But what we do know is that when optimizing flavors in today’s frozen yogurt, as Gumabon said, “There is no limit to the creative options.”