melting ice creamTaking the family for a summer drive and stopping to have ice cream is a great way to spend time together.  One of the downsides of ice cream cones is you had to eat them fast or they dripped all over the place.  For those that like to savor each lick or bite there is an interesting new ice cream invention that says sayonara to melting, based on an accidental discovery that is really catching on in Japan.

It all started when the Biotherapy Development Research Center of Kanazawa, Japan asked a pastry chef to come up with a strawberry dessert using polyphenol, a liquid extract from strawberries.  This was a noble cause to help strawberry farmers in the area affected by an earthquake and tsunami in 2011. The farmers have resumed growing strawberries, but the crop was gonna go to waste because the strawberries were not up to market standards.  However the polyphenol from strawberries could be used but as it turns out it stops the oil and water in the cream from separating too quickly, and so every time the chef tried to add the strawberry extract to the dairy cream it solidified instantly.  While the strawberry dessert idea was scrapped the team quickly realized they had accidentally invented something better that seems more like an ice cream popsicle and immediately turned it into a salable treat.

Now according to the Asahi Shimbun, the Kanazawa “not melting popsicles” ice cream which first hit stores in April 2017, is now sold in Osaka and Tokyo, and has gained an international reputation.

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