1. How to use the spreadsheets

This bundle contains three Microsoft Excel spreadsheets:

Donation required: £9.99

Pack 2. Customised butter, skim milk powder calculator for use in product development / small batch trials (A single source of MSNF calculator).

This pack  contains one Microsoft Excel spreadsheet which has been customised to illustrate how a simple spreadsheet from Pack 1 can be modified to enable batch mixes to be formulated and costed:

• Calculator for determining ingredients for ice cream mixes using butter, skim milk powder, sugar, emulsifier, stabiliser and water.

It has been modified to enable different batch sizes and the cost of mixes to be calculated. A table indicating the optimal value for MSNF has been added and control limits set; users can easily adjust these limits. Donors can use the “unhide” command to access hidden cells and explore the approach to mix calculations.

Donation required: £9.99

Pack 3. Two source MSNF calculators

This bundle contains four Microsoft Excel spreadsheets:

• Calculator for determining ingredients for ice cream mixes using cream, skim milk powder, sugar, water, emulsifier and stabiliser.
• Calculator for determining ingredients for ice cream mixes using whole milk, butter, skim milk powder, sugar, emulsifier and stabiliser.
• Calculator for determining ingredients for ice cream mixes using skim milk, butter, skim milk powder, sugar, emulsifier and stabiliser.
• Calculator for determining ingredients for ice cream mixes using whole milk, cream, skim milk powder, sugar, emulsifier and stabiliser.

Donation required: £19.99

Pack 4. Three source MSNF calculators

This contains four Microsoft Excel spreadsheets:

• Calculator for determining ingredients for ice cream mixes using whole milk, cream, skim milk powder, sugar, emulsifier and stabiliser.
• Calculator for determining ingredients for ice cream mixes using skim milk, cream, skim milk powder, sugar, emulsifier and stabiliser
• Calculator for determining ingredients for ice cream mixes using sweetened condensed skim milk, whole milk, sugar, emulsifier and stabiliser.
• Calculator for determining ingredients for ice cream mixes using whole milk, sweetened condensed whole milk, cream, sugar, emulsifier and stabiliser.
  
  The latter two Spreadsheets have been included to demonstrate the more complicated ice cream mix calculations e.g. calculating the weights of ingredients, contributing three sources of fat and three sources of MSNF, required producing an ice cream mix to a target composition. This type of calculation where concentrated milk is used instead of milk powder is generally more prevalent in North America than in the UK and Ireland and students sometimes have difficulties with these calculations.

Donation required: £19.99

Pack 5. Customised spreadsheets for product development / small batch mix manufacture using whole milk, cream and skim milk powder as the major ingredients

Whole milk, cream and skim milk powder are amongst the most widely used major ingredients in ice cream mixes and the spreadsheets in pack 5 have been carefully customised to enable major mix calculations including mix costings to be undertaken. Because some manufacturers are now using dairy and vegetable fat blends, a spreadsheet enabling these calculations has also been included.

Pack 5 contains a customised spreadsheet in four versions or options.

Version 1 has been configured to work with batches in kilograms and version 2 enables imperial batch calculations, pounds and ounces to be calculated. These versions do not enable mix costings to be calculated, that facility has been added to versions 3 and 4.

Each spreadsheet has been designed to allow users flexibility in ingredient addition; two additional 'blank' ingredients can be added without having to change the spreadsheet formula's.

The concentration of some ingredients can be set by the user e.g. CSS is normally used at a concentration of 80% solids; users can adjust to higher or lower % solids.

A table indicating the optimal value for MSNF has been added and control limits set; users can easily adjust these limits. Depending on the concentration of MSNF and whether or not it is optimal, two messages are generated. Message 1 will indicate whether the mix is optimal for MSNF and, if not, to note the second message.  Message 2 will indicate whether the mix is within ± 3% of the optimal value and advises that judgement MSNF required is required or in excess of this limit where the user is advised to reconsider the mix formulation proposed.

Option 1 and 2 spreadsheets as for all the spreadsheets in this pack have a table for specifying the batch weight. This is useful particularly in product development and when learning how to make ice cream. Users can set the batch size to reflect their scale of operation.

Because cost is of critical importance in ice cream mix development an ingredient cost table has been added to spreadsheet variants 3 and 4. To use this facility users simply replace the values in the spreadsheet with their own values and your local currency to enable batch costs to be calculated

Manufacturers may need to produce their own dairy / vegetable fat blends and this facility has now been added to the option 4 spreadsheet in this pack. Note this spreadsheet can enable the production of 100 % dairy fat mixes by setting the vegetable fat ingredient input to zero. Because the spreadsheets in pack 5 have been designed to work using whole milk and cream they cannot be used to produce mixes containing no dairy fat!

Donation required: £49.99

Pack 6. Customised spreadsheets for product development / small batch mix manufacture using whole milk powder and cream as the major ingredients

This pack contains two Microsoft Excel spreadsheets:

• Calculator for determining ingredients for ice cream mixes using cream, whole milk powder, sugar, emulsifier stabiliser and two additional ingredients.
• Calculator for determining ingredients for ice cream mixes using cream, whole milk powder, vegetable fat, sugar, emulsifier, stabiliser and one additional ingredient.

These spreadsheets are similar in functionality to those in pack 5 but some additional features have been added e.g. mix costs can be calculated. An additional small programme, called a macro (code is password protected), has been used to ensure that the correct MSNF balance is obtained. The macro has potentially wide application across a range of ingredients and enables quite complex mix calculations to be undertaken.

Interest in calculations for determining particular milk fat / vegetable fat blends are increasing and this facility has been added in final spreadsheet in this pack.

Donation required: £39.99

 2. Enter the mix formula into the first data entry row ("Target Mix composition") into the yellow coloured cells as shown below.

• Some of the spreadsheets will enable you set the batch size of a mix and to calculate the recipe required. Others also offer the option of costing a mix.
• It is important that you check that all the ingredients sum to 100 and that the sum of the MSNF and fat supplied by the ingredients balance with the formula or mix specification as shown below:
• Finally all the spreadsheets carry a warning to check that the starting formula is balanced for fat: sugar ratio and MSNF. Warning! Before undertaking mix calculations technologists should ensure that the quantities of ingredients calculated will give a balanced mix. This concept is explained in more detail in the article on ice cream e.g. an ice cream mix containing 8% fat must be balanced with respect to sugar and MSNF. If this mix was produced using a vertical freezer, the mix should contain a concentration of 13% sugar. Assuming 1.25% emulsifier/stabiliser was used then the MSNF required can be calculated as 11.1%. Ice cream mixes produced using cows' or goats' milk and no concentrated source of MSNF e.g. skim milk powder cannot be balanced for MSNF in the conventional commercial sense.
• Some also offer a facility for checking that MSNF is optimal and will give an error message if the mix is not optimal.

Written by Michael Mullan