New Ice Cream Changes Colors as You Lick It

In a stroke of confectionary genius worthy of Willa Wonka, a Spanish scientist has come up with an ice cream that changes colors (but unfortunately not flavors) as you lick it. It’s already on the market in Spain, at an ice cream shop called IceXperience in Blanes, Girona, north of Barcelona.

The new ice cream, dubbed Xamaleon (Spanish for “chameleon”), was created by physicist Manuel Linares, according to Science World Daily. The tutti-frutti flavor – including ingredients such as strawberries, cocoa, almonds, banana, pistachio, vanilla, caramel and undisclosed “exotic fruits” — turns from periwinkle blue to swirls of purple and pink as it is licked. (See a video on IceXperience’s Facebook page.)

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Xamaleon, once the licking process has started; Credit: Facebook/IceXperience

Linares says he was inspired to come up with the creation after Brit Charlie Francis invented a glow-in-the-dark ice cream last year using a jellyfish protein.

The secret to the hue-changing ice cream is a spritz of what Linares poetically and totally shadily calls “love elixir” after it is scooped. Fluctuations in acidity and temperature kickstart the process, and once you actually lick the ice cream, it starts changing color. (Patent is pending on this “all-natural” concoction.)

“Any food will change color if it changes temperature, you encapsulate it or it oxidizes,” Linares told Spanish-language gastronomy website Cocinatis.

Linares says Xamaleon is just the first of his frozen concoctions. He says he is working on an aphrodisiacal ice cream created with medicinal plants from Peru and Africa, a mojito ice cream, a lemongrass ice cream and a cheesecake crumble flavor.

And while the glow-in-the-dark ice cream goes for an insane $225 a scoop, Xamaleon sells for about the same price as other artisanal ice creams.

Now that’s proper use of a physics degree.

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