Play series is me focusing on using play to explore new ways of experiencing life and learning

Attribute Engineering meets culinary experience

Having both an engineering and design background, I find ‘playing’ with food a satisfying discovery.

Personal Project

Cakes
Ice cream
Sous vide

Homemade ice cream is a really interesting challenge because once has to balance a variety of physics challenges that intermingle with flavour challenges.

Scoopability

As I don’t have control over the freezer temperature in the office, I had to balance sugar, fat, ice crystals and other factors in order to make the ice cream the desired texture and scoopability for each bespoke recipe.
This often meant playing with different sugars (dextrose disrupts ice formation more than table sugar), fat content and even using vodka as an anti-freeze.

Flavours

My human guinea pigs colleagues in the offer range between 27-60 years old, with a palate tending towards ‘less ‘sweet’ than ‘traditional commercial’ ice creams we are all accustomed to.
This meant playing with sugars, which would impact scoopability and mouth feel.

Mouthfeel

Getting a desired texture to replicate a particular ‘flavour experience’ meant playing with different fat and protein content: – a ‘Cereal Milk’ ice cream should have a light milky texture, while a ‘Strawberry Cheesecake’ ice cream should feel dense and rich with sharpness from the strawberry topping.

Flavours I’ve tried

All star Flavours
Hot Cross Bun, Cheesecake, Sticky Date Pudding, Cereal Milk, Milk Tea, Malted Milk, Kaya, Bangkok Peanut Butter, Root Beer Float (dry ice edition)

Honourable Mentions
Cathay Delight (kiwi fruit + coconut cream), Tolberone, Nutella Overload, Olive Oil, Malted Milk, Bacio, Pavlova

Biscuit and Cakes Collection
Monte Carlo, Kingston, Lamington X1/V1/V2, strawberry cheesecake,

Sorbets
Watermelon, Ginger beer, Strawberry

Failures
Custard powder ice cream, cake mix ice cream, froyo V1, Fudge ice cream, Bombe Alaska

A Chocolate Ripple Cake is a cake based off a technique where whipped cream is applied to a stack of biscuits and allowed to rest – where the cream is absorbed into the hard biscuit and gains a creamy cake consistency.

After experimenting with various biscuits, we find two (seriously tasty) opportunities:

• A gingersnap based cake that has a light, spicy maturity.
• A cake that uses chocolate chips as a fun textural element.