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Ice Cream Creator tops CareerBuilder.com's top 10 Dream Jobs

CareerBuilder.com
FoodProcessing.com
06/13/2008

Go ahead, enjoy your coffee. Appreciate the coziness of your cubicle. Be grateful for all of the little things that make your day more pleasant.

After all, we can't all spend our work days jetting off to Africa or ordering every dessert on the menu in the name of research.

While the rest of us are cramped into cube farms, a few lucky people earn their livings by shopping for designer duds, eating ice cream or traveling the world. The following jobs, envied by people everywhere, are almost too good to be true:

Ice Cream Creator
Tempting ice cream flavors -- like lowfat cookie dough and brownie in one carton -- don't just appear on the shelves. It takes teams of workers to turn a great idea into a mass-produced product.

Derek Spors knows a thing or two about ice cream. As an "ice cream scientologist" and senior product developer for Ben and Jerry's, he's responsible for creating (and tasting) new flavors for the ice cream company, including "Marsha, Marsha, Marshmallow" and "Karamel Sutra."

"When you develop flavors for Ben and Jerry's, there's no shortage of ideas," Spors said. The company gets 1,000 to 1,500 new flavor ideas submitted to its Web site each month. But he still needs to do some research -- for example, hitting trendy new restaurants and ordering every dessert on the menu for inspiration.

Although he can work long hours on his feet under deadline pressure and eats loads of ice cream, Spors says he hasn't gained much weight since starting at Ben and Jerry's six years ago. His secret: He just eats a taste of the frozen treat -- not the whole bowl.

Salary: Average annual salary for food scientists is $56,600, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.