At least he's cool

[austin_dern]

From the ``perils of not having your advertising copy proofread by a native speaker'' department comes this notice posted on the side of an ice cream kiosk named Mini Melt:

No ice cream looks, and tastes like it!

The novelty here is the ice cream is sold in balls, little pea-sized globules which the posters say are cryogenically frozen so that water crystals don't form and give it the taste of freezer-burned ice cream. Specifically they say they use the ``coldest temperature known to mankind,'' some 187 degrees Celsius below zero. So, strike two on them, then.

Actually, ice cream in little spheres is rather appealing, as the mouth feel goes, and it makes particularly easy the blending, in a digital fashion, of discrete flavors. The flash freezing doesn't prevent it from tasting like over-frozen ice cream, though I wonder if the frost wasn't just the consequence of the freezer being opened and closed all day. It's not bad, though, and I would be at least intellectually interested in eating something that had ever been frozen to closer to absolute zero. I don't insist on the complete draining of entropy from the ice cream, mind you; I'd be fine with superfluid helium temperatures. Available in chocolate, vanilla, mint, and many, many more.

Trivia: Structural assembly for the crew module of the space shuttle Columbia began on 4 June 1974. Source: Space Shuttle: The History of the National Space Transportation System, Dennis R Jenkins.

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Comments

[xolo.livejournal.com]

That sounds like Dippin' Dots (http://www.dippindots.com/home.asp), 'The Ice Cream of the Future'. It's ice cream that's dropped shot-tower style into LN2, and frozen into tiny, brightly coloured spheres. The vendor has tubs of different flavours, and you can mix and match right on the spot. They've had them at the Indiana State Fair since the early 90s, but in looking over their website, they seem to be a midwestern company, so they might be a novelty elsewhere.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

That's certainly what it looks like. i don't know that this is a new product here -- the sign seemed to indicate they have franchises in Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand at least -- but it's the first I've noticed it at this particular mall, thus why I dub it a novelty.

[nimblesquirrel.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen it down here in NZ... yet. Me and a chef friend of mine do have a recipe for making ice cream with liquid nitrogen. Apparently it is very smooth and (somewhat) fluffy due to the bubbles from the boiling liquid N2 in the mix. We'll be making a test batch (as part of a little project) soon. I'll let you know how it turns out. :)

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Well, hi there, and please do. I'll give the ice cream globs smoothness, at least past the frosted shell, but I don't know about fluffy. Again, time since the balls were manufactured may have had an influence.

[spaceroo.livejournal.com]

Some of the local McDonalds around here have been test marketing Dippin' Dots as a menu item. (Just one "mixed flavor" tub.) I bought it once, and, well, have to admit I missed the point.

[captpackrat.livejournal.com]

They've had a Dippin' Dots vendor in the local maul here since at least the early 90's or so. And all the McDonalds around here appear to have it now, but with just 3 flavors (vanilla, chocolate, and banana split)

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Banana split ... that's an odd choice, if you're going to have only three flavors on hand.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I like the odd complex-molecule shapes you can build up with the balls, though. That's fun.

[patchoblack.livejournal.com]

o/`...Joe Cool. o/`

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Point, to Patchy.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

I've seen Dippin' Dots in several a mall aroudn here, but have yet to try it. I'm not entirely sold on the premise nor the portion sizes- I'm much more a Ben&Jerry's or Cold Stone Creamey man.

--Chiaroscuro

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, the portions are small, but they came in rather cheap too, a touch more than the cost of those mass-produced ice cream cones. I don't eat much ice cream here, for some strange reason, so ... billing it as a ``gourmet,'' meaning ``small'', treat worked fine for it.