Ices Plain & Fancy

This weekend, I attended a workshop at Ursa’s hosted by Ices Plain and Fancy. Ices is a boutique ice cream shop located near Tower Grove in St. Louis. The store specializes in creating made-to-order liquid nitrogen ice cream. The workshop included a short history lesson about the creation of liquid nitrogen ice-cream, a few science exciting experiments, and the revealing of a new flavor that will be released this summer.

History

The night began with a short introduction about the history of the ice-cream shop. Ices Plain and Fancy is named after the work of Agnes Marshall, the “Queen of Ices” who lived during the Victorian Era. She was one of the first women to suggest using liquid nitrogen to make ice cream, and she published her own book Ices Plain and Fancy, after which the boutique shop is named today.

Science

After the introduction, I learned a few cool facts about liquid nitrogen. As an Anthropology and Marketing major, I am always fascinated by learning neat science facts!

Latent freeze effect: Liquid nitrogen is so cold (-321 degrees) that if you dip your hand in a container of it, it will immediately evaporate off of your skin because the temperature difference is so great.

Flammability: After lighting a tissue on fire, Max, the culinary expert and demonstrator, poured liquid nitrogen on it, and the flame was completed exhausted. Liquid nitrogen is not flammable, but rather it is your best friend if you need to put out a fire any time soon!

Overrun: Overrun refers to how much air is added into ice cream when it is made. Regular ice cream may have anywhere from 90-100% overrun. Liquid nitrogen ice cream, and specifically the ice cream at Ices Plain and Fancy, has only 10% overrun. This is evidenced by how extremely dense and silky the texture is when you eat it.

Experiments

During the third part of the workshop, the audience got to watch a few cool experiments that demonstrated the power and effects of liquid nitrogen.

A bouquet of flowers was dipped into the bucket of liquid nitrogen. You could hear a crackling sound as it set into the leaves. Members from the audience were then asked to come up, each take a flower, and throw it to the ground. Even with the most tentative throw, the flowers shattered into hundreds of pieces when they hit the ground!​

Then just for fun, Max also dipped and threw to the ground a banana and half of a pineapple. LOL.

The second experiment involved dunking an inflated balloon into the bucket. While the balloon was submerged in the liquid nitrogen, its pressure changed, and then balloon shrank. When it was taken out of the bucket, it slowly began to inflate again, and then it popped!

Process

Max then began to show us how to make the liquid nitrogen ice cream.

First, you start with your base – cream and sugar. From there, you simply add the liquid nitrogen and it flash turns into ice cream. The flash reaction keeps the ice crystals tiny- much smaller than you would find in regular ice cream, which contributes to creating the dense, silky texture.

At Ices Plain and Fancy, most of the flavors start with either a vanilla or chocolate base and additional ingredients are combined into it. Recently, the team traveled 600 miles down to Ponchatoula, Louisiana, to pick up fresh strawberries that will be added into their ice cream flavors!

Finally, while the ice cream was churning in the metal bowl, Max reminded us that since metal is a natural conductor, the cream will start to freeze to the side of the bowl during the reaction. So to combat this, he whipped out a fancy blow torch and flamed the sides of the bowl to keep the cream from freezing.

Flavors

At Ices, you can find a wide variety of ice cream flavors. If you’re looking for something nostalgic, check out the Mint Chip, Butter Pecan, or Salted Dulce de Leche.

If you’re feeling adventurous, you can’t go wrong with the Campfire Smores or World’s Fair Jelly Donut.

There is even a dog-friendly concoction, and 50% of the “Sticky Charlie” flavor proceeds are donated to Stray Rescue of St. Louis.

Overall, this workshop was a great experience to learn about nitrogen ice cream and see how much science and creativity is involved in the creation process. I loved getting to try a new flavor that will be revealed this summer, and will be hitting up Ices one last time before I leave St. Louis this semester!

For more information, visit www.icesplainandfancy.com.

#StLouis #icecream