The Ice-cream Sundae Challenge

The main challenge I’m going to talk about now is the ice cream sundae. With the sundae, I had the goal in mind and that was to make it as over the top as possible because from what I heard from my competitors I would need it. My brother and cousin were really trying to beat me this time around.

The night we were given the challenge I first thought of a dropped ice cream and what that might look like. But over the days I began to think of it as a giant explosive mess. I imagined something that was random, the opposite of perfect.

I started off with the ice cream. The ice cream itself was the easiest part of the whole project — I went with a mint choc chip one instead of plain vanilla or chocolate. Next step was the chocolate balloons, now it sounds so much easier than it was. Making things look perfect and messy isn’t easy. Now for the hardest part of the whole sundae, the sugar plate. The sugar plate has a lot of things going on. Perfect temperature, super dangerous, only one chance to get it right. So really hard to do successfully. You’ll need a candy thermometer, just stuff you don’t normally have to use. And be prepared to take risks and fail, at least once.

In this post, I write about how I had to think like a scientist to get the plate right (and be safe) and how I had to think like a designer to make it like the idea in my head. And at the end the links are below for you to check them out later if you want to try and make your own.

Science _ Getting the Technical Elements Working

There were many layers to consider in the sundae that relied on science. Consideration for heat, duration, size and cooling were just some of the variables that needed to be taken into account. To show the kind of hypothesis thinking that I needed I’ve written up the sugar plate in the scientific method.

Materials:

· 200g Glucose syrup

· 300g Sugar

· 75mL water

· Green and Blue food colouring

· Saucepan, candy thermometer and baking paper

Safety:

The sugar had to be heated to 320F: the main risk was you could burn yourself.
- To prevent this: use safety gloves and eye goggles keep a safe distance from anyone else
- If burnt: remove the sugar before it sticks and run under cold water immediately. Then apply burn cream.

Once the sugar set it could break and become shards: the risk was it could cut you.
- To prevent breaking, keep on a steady platform
- If broken: stand back and clean up with foot protection on and clean up thoroughly.

Method:

1. Poured sugar into saucepan on high temperature
2. Poured water into saucepan to help sugar dissolve
3. Stirred until the mixture boiled
4. Added glucose syrup and continued to stir
5. Until it became 320 degrees Fahrenheit
6. Then saucepan is taken off the element
7. Blue and green food dye are added
8. The hot syrup is poured directly onto baking paper
9. Then left to set (about 3–5 minutes)

Results:
Experiment 1: The sugar plate: 6/10 creative, 5/10 functional
Experiment 2: The sugar plate: 10/10 creative, 7/10 functional

Limitations: One limitation of the experiment was the sugar sets very quickly and is very fragile. This could be overcome by doing multiple experiments to learn what the sugar was capable of.

Conclusion: In this experiment, it was found that when you add the food colouring it is best to not mix it in to get a marbled effect. And that you need to pour fast to create an organic shape, and pour a lot to make it thick enough.

This supported the hypothesis that when we followed the method closely a functional and creative plate could be made.

Innovation _ Getting the idea looking right

The most important thing was to have a good concept and get ideas from other people to push my thinking.

I looked at lots of background research for inspiration. But I definitely wanted to do something that hadn’t been done before. I did a lot of research around how to prepare the balloons. Exploring what type of balloon to use — in the end helium with no oil seemed the best tips. I thought I’d just need to melt some chocolate and get a balloon, but this was a bit harder for me than others because I used white chocolate.

I made at least 9 balloons of which 8 failed to do what I had hoped. Until finally, one worked perfectly.

Working with a material I don’t know required a kind of prototyping to see what would work. Some learning only happens through trial and error.

As a scientist, I worked out how to experiment with temperatures (outdoor, fridge or freezer) and thinking like an innovator about what might look right (size, shape, thickness and texture). Once I had the idea the design process came more from playing with what the materials could do than sketching the idea in advance. I was never sure whether what was in my head could happen in reality.

The most obvious learning came from what didn’t work.

Learning from failure was what really happened. The first plate seemed great. But it wasn’t the shape I had imagined. It wasn’t the colour I hoped. It broke and shattered everywhere. The second plate was made thicker, more uneven, more random. Adding the dye and not stirring it in. Pouring more slowly, more deliberately. Then the plate became just what I had seen in my head. Same with the balloons. Some blew up in our faces and over all the walls of the kitchen. Some cracked, some never set. But to be like the messy, random concept I needed it to be fragile but beautiful, on the 12th one it worked.

The Recipe

The Sugar Plate was created using the recipe from the How to Make That site.

The Chocolate Orb used a chocolate ganache recipe…you can find them everywhere.

The homemade ice-cream was from the Bigger Bolder Baking site that had a recipe where you did not need an ice-cream maker.