Brigham Young University has more than its fair share of iconic treats: Cougar Tails, mint brownies, Graham Canyon ice cream and chocolate milk.
In 2024, the university’s dining services set out to find its next novelty concession item, or as executive chef John McDonald described it to the Deseret News in October, BYU’s “next Cougar Tail.”
With this new charge in mind, head pastry chef Fernanda Dutra revisited an idea she had tried previously for an ice cream treat.
“Chef Fernanda had been working on a novelty ice cream some years back, and it never really took off because we didn’t have equipment, kind of some of those support mechanisms to make it work,” McDonald said. “And she said, ‘Hey, let’s try to make this work again.’”
On Friday, that treat — the Cougar Paw — will make its official concession launch.
“We took what we sell the most of is ice cream and said how can we make that more novel, the whole experience on campus? We’ll sell it in vending, retail. It won’t be just for athletic events,” McDonald said.
Developing the Cougar Paw
Dutra knew this new food item had to be “something that is related to BYU.”
Cougar Tails already had the tail of BYU’s mascot covered, so Dutra considered another element of the Cougar to build her treat around: the paw.
“It has to be a product you don’t have to explain what it is, and this is perfect for that because it’s a popsicle, it’s ice cream, and it’s a cougar paw. It has everything to do with us, with BYU,” Dutra said.
To make it even more BYU, Dutra used the BYU Creamery’s LaVell’s Vanilla.
“We use BYU ice cream. That’s the best ice cream ever,” she said. “It’s very high fat. It’s very clean in your mouth.”
Dutra bought specialty molds that resembled a cougar’s paws to begin experimenting, starting with different chocolates to dip the ice cream in. She tried white, milk and dark chocolates and experimented with different fat content and percentages of the chocolates and even toppings.
Some of those Cougar Paw flavors may be revisited in the future, according to Dutra.
“I tested a bunch of different chocolates, and originally we were going to do dark chocolate, but after doing a tasting with a bunch of people and students, they go for the milk chocolate more than the dark,” she said.
After settling on milk chocolate as the dipping chocolate, Dutra developed a recipe for the chocolate that she said is “nice and smooth in your mouth.”
An artisanal process
BYU dining services went about this attempt at the Cougar Paw “more aggressively” than when Dutra first came up with the idea, McDonald said.
“We made sure we had enough molds to do it successfully. We worked on equipment, ways to freeze it, dip it, so it’s kind of been a more aggressive approach to (it) than the first time where it kind of failed on us,” he said.
The Cougar Paw is BYU’s version of Disneyland’s iconic Mickey Mouse ice cream bars.
“It’s (a) simple idea, but it’s so good because we use very good chocolate,” Dutra said.
But unlike those Mickey bars, the Cougar Paw isn’t flat. The toes and heel pad of the paw are distinctly defined using a specially-made mold. The popsicle sticks are even custom made for the Cougar Paw.
“It’s almost cartoonish, kid friendly kind of,” Dutra said.
Part of the story behind the Cougar Paw is the “artisanal process,” as Dutra described it, to create each one.
“We do it by hand,” Dutra said. “We run the ice cream on a small ice cream machine.”
It’s a two-day process to make Cougar Paws.
On the first day, the molds are filled with LaVell’s Vanilla before adding the popsicle stick and then freezing them. Then the next day, they’re taken out of the molds and then dipped in chocolate in the afternoon.
The Cougar Paws are then all wrapped in-house.
As of October, Dutra and her team were making 500 Cougar Paws a day and were planning to buy more molds.
BYU doesn’t use just any chocolate for the Cougar Paw. They’re dipped in a “very good, high quality milk chocolate,” according to Dutra.
“It’s like very fancy, real chocolate. It’s creamy,” she said. “We use coconut oil as well with the chocolate that helps set really quick, and it gives a nice and creamy texture.”
BYU believes in the Cougar Paw so much that dining services assistant general manager Bill Wright said he “would put this up against any novelty across the nation.”
The new Cougar Paws will officially be launched as a concession item Friday night at the Marriott Center when BYU basketball hosts Abilene Christian.