Ice Cream That Changes Color When You Lick It and Other Frozen Innovations

Ice Cream That Changes Color When You Lick It

BLACKBERRY_CHIP_ICE_CREAM

Not only is ice cream about the best thing ever — and that's not just summer talkin' — it actually keeps getting better and better. Every year brings new ice cream innovations.

This summer, for instance, Cronut® creator Dominique Ansel teamed up with fashion designer Lisa Perry to bring the world an ice cream sundae in a can: a sealed, frozen chocolate-lined soup can filled with root-beer and stracciatella ice creams, mascarpone semifreddo, macerated cherries, honey marshmallows and mini cherry meringues. "Pop It!" reads the label of the limited-edition frozen treat, which was available at only one location and for only one day, earlier this month.

And last month, a Spanish ice cream-making physicist, Manuel Linares, revealed he'd developed an ice cream that changes color when you lick it. The frozen treat, a flavor called Xamaleón that's said to taste like tutti-frutti, responds to temperature changes and acids in the mouth. When it's first scooped into a cone and sprayed with something Linares calls a "love elixir," which he has said is " made with natural ingredients," the ice cream is periwinkle blue, but as it's licked, its hue changes to pink and then purple. It's kind of like a frozen food mood ring.

Linares is reportedly also working on an aphrodisiac ice cream — lending the term "ice cream lover" a whole new meaning — and is said to have found inspiration for his new flavors in the work of U.K.-based food inventor Charlie Harry Francis. Francis, whose "edible inventions" company is called Lick Me I'm Delicious, also got attention when he invented a glow-in-the-dark ice cream using jellyfish protein. Each lick reportedly made the scoop glow brighter.

Maybe, come to think of it, ice cream isn't really getting better and better — just weirder and weirder.

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