When 37-year-old Manuel decided to switch professions and become a professional cook, he couldn’t help adding a bit of his knowledge to his cooking. He recently attended a course in ice cream making at the Hotel Business School Hoffman in Barcelona, where students were encouraged to create a new flavor of ice cream.
Manuel declared that his ice cream would be able to change color, a statement that earned him laughs from his tutor. But Manuel stuck to his goal, and managed to convince everyone he wasn’t joking. He created ‘Xamaleon’ – ‘chameleon’ in Catalan – a special ice cream that changes from purple to pink when it melts.
“Everyone laughed, but as a physicist I know that there are various possibilities that might work and I was delighted when I managed to crack it and create an ice cream that changes color,” he said. “It was important to me to make sure I only used natural ingredients, so it took a bit longer.”
According to Manuel, Xamaleon is made with strawberries, cocoa, almonds, banana, pistachio, vanilla and caramel, and it tastes like tutti-frutti. He also revealed that the ice cream has become incredibly popular and is selling quite well at the ice cream parlor he runs in the town of Calella de Mar, Barcelona. But he won’t divulge his recipe just yet: “I am not giving out too much detail because the patents are still going through,” he said.
He did reveal his source of inspiration, though: “I am a huge fan of the British ice cream genius Charlie Francis, the creator of a fluorescent ice and founder of the company Lick Me Delicious, and I wanted to create an ice cream that changed color to try and do something new as well.” Manuel had studied engineering and physics at university, and worked as a professor before he decided to pursue his passion for cooking.
He now hopes to expand his business outside of Spain. Well, if his ice cream tastes as amazing as it looks, I’m sure that he’ll be able to reach his goal very soon.
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