Liquid nitrogen

This is the start of the last couple of school days. We are now almost at the end of the journey. Again the group was divided in two. The group who were working down stairs were playing around with liquid nitrogen and the group upstairs were working with different powders doing all kinds of scientific stuff. 

My group started down stairs with liquid nitrogen. Fist we got an explanation of what it was, what it does and how to handle it (of course with lots of care!). Then the fun part started when they start dropping all kinds of stuff in the nitrogen and let us taste it. They also made some raspberry ice cream which was very tasty.

After that it was time for us to experiment a bit. The assignment was to make a little dessert plate and this is what we came up with in the end. We had a spongecake, fruit popsicles, a piece of Bros chocolate and some baked white chocolate.  We had all different idea's but non of them seem to work the way we planned. 

We used a Kidde (some kind of whipped cream dispenser) to make the spongecake. We basically made a cake batter, put it in the Kidde, add a gas charger and used it to fill a cup. We put the cup in the microwave and after a couple of seconds we had spongecake. We also tried to butter the cup first and then microwave the batter, but the results were horrible. The spongecake didn't came out right. We experimented a bit and only one spongecake came out the way we wanted.

Then with the same whipped cream dispenser we wanted to make a "Bros chocolate bar". First we had to mix the chocolate with some cocoa butter, temper it and fill the Kidde. We poured this mixture into a plastic bag and used a vacuum machine to make it bubbly. Unfortunately the chocolate didn't set and when it did it tasted horrible. Perhaps the cocoa butter was not good anymore. 

Then we tried to make ice cream using the nitrogen. Somehow this didn't work either since it turned out all sticky and glue like. 

The best part of the day was  when we made our own popsicle by dipping a piece of fruit and fruit purees it in the nitrogen.

I also dipped my popsicle in some piña colada  liqueur. Look how big my popsicle was!

One of my class mates wanted to make some baked white chocolate. The recipe was super easy. You melt some white chocolate, spread it on some non stick paper and stick it in an 170C oven till the edges starts to brown. This happens very fast so of course I burned one portion. The chocolate came out crunchy and so tasty. I bet it would go great with some vanilla ice cream. 

It was a day full of experiments. One other day to go before class ends.