To borrow from a badly outdated expression, it’s probably true that one of the best ways to a consumer’s heart – male or female – is indeed through the stomach. Otherwise, there'd be no more free wine tastings and the baker at the baklava shop would quit stuffing me with sweets every time I visit.

In short, good marketing recognizes the truth in another, gender-neutral bit of wisdom: The proof is in the pudding.

That’s not to say Melinda Falkenberg-Poetz, marketing communications coordinator for Alberta Milk, asked instructor David Whitaker’s second-year Culinary Arts students to stop at just pudding.

In a recipe-writing contest she organized last fall with Whitaker, she asked for milk as a key ingredient, offering $200 for creations that had the best flavor, were healthy and easy and inexpensive to make. 

“I had a great afternoon sampling about 13 different recipes,” she recalls, having tasted pasta dishes, meats with milk-based sauces, desserts and more. “It was a tough world that I lived in for awhile,” she adds with a laugh.

After choosing Joelle Sparvier’s Finger Lick’n Butter Chicken, Alexei Boldireff’s Pollo Al Latte and Daniel Labutes’ Brazilian Pie to appear on recipe cards (shot by NAIT Photographic Technology students) for distribution at public events and trade shows, Falkenberg-Poetz also saw the value of the cream-based recipes submitted.

Though too rich to fit with the milk criteria, they were sure to impress amateur cooks and eaters alike.

Besides being posted at realcreamrecipes.com, recipes for Katie Blackmore’s Chocolate Peanut Butter Cheesecake Tarts, Brittani Blake’s Raspberry Cream with Berries and Andrew Newman’s Thai Green Curry Chicken went on to appear in the June 2010 issues of Chatelaine, Canadian Living and Today’s Parent magazines.

“It was a real bonus for us to get these recipes,” says Falkenberg-Poetz. Don’t ask her to pick a favourite, though. “The green curry is delicious, you can put the raspberry whip cream on top of a rich glass of hot chocolate milk and then the chocolate peanut butter cup was – I mean, chocolate and peanut butter, come on! It was really, really good.”

In other words, try them and see for yourself.