Artisan Ice Cream

Excerpt from Dairy Foods magazine, September 2011, pg. 37

Adding Color One Sparkle at a Time

One of the latest crazes in the baked goods category is edible glitter, sparkles that come in a rainbow of colors, as well as metallic hues.  Frozen dessert manufacturers can add excitement to their offerings by using the glitter as an inclusion, and scoop shop operators can offer it as a topping.

The glitter comes in soluble and insoluble forms, with each version serving a different function. The insoluble form, which is based on sodium alginate, provides color specks dispersed throughout the mix. The glitter can function alone, or enhance the flavor of other inclusions. Edible water-soluble films can even be flavored and cut into shapes. For example, imagine red glitter or strawberry shapes dispersed in strawberry ice cream for an iridescent experience.

Soluble glitter, which is based on gum arabic, can be added at the end of the ice cream-making process right before the hard freeze. These specks will dissolve slightly (providing that freeze-thaw is kept to the minimum), bleeding color into the ice cream and delivering a swirl of color to the finished product. Different glitters with different solubility characteristics will help control the amount of color bleeding and therefore the swirl effect. This is similar to the way colors bleed off candies mixed into ice cream.

The glitter can also be applied topically to novelties, in particular the chocolate coating on bars or the exposed ice cream between two sandwich wafers.  The pearlescent pigment used in the metallic glitter is limited by FDA to confection applications. Thus candies and coatings with metallic glitter can be topically applied to frozen desserts.