Odd ice cream flavors have taken up the food world by storm in the past few years, so it is only fitting that someone create a glow-in-the-dark ice cream. While it is hard to imagine a glow-in-the-dark ice cream that is safe for human consumption, that's exactly what ice cream entrepreneur Charlie Francis of Lick Me I'm Delicious has created using a very unique ingredient: the luminescence protein of a jellyfish. The jellyfish proteins are calcium-activated, which means the ice cream begins to glow once the consumer starts to lick it. Due to the ingredients required to create the ice cream, the concoction also comes with a hefty price tag of £140 (or $224, at 0.62 pounds to the dollar) a scoop.
And if you think a glow-in-the-dark ice cream is weird, know that Charlie Francis' ice cream laboratory is known to create off beat flavors, including: raspberry mojito dark port and stilton, salted cookie caramel cupcake, lemon meringue pie, toffee apple, and roast beef and horseradish. As for his inspiration for the glow-in-the-dark ice cream, the ice cream maker reveals that he stumbled upon a research paper that gave him the inspiration to create glow-in-the-dark ice cream.
"About 6 months ago, I was searching for 'Synsepalum dulcificum', or the 'miracle fruit' which is a crazy berry that makes sour fruits taste sweet (so you can eat a lemon whole without wincing)," said Charlie Francis to Latin Times about the ice cream, which took six months of testing to create. "Anyway, while searching for this weird fruit I came across a research paper on jellyfish and their incredible bio-luminescence properties which allow them to produce their eerie glow, basically like a fish flashlight. I immediately started geeking up on the subject and eventually found a lab in China where they are synthesizing the protein and I spoke to the scientists there who agreed to ship me over a sample. It's incredible stuff but still at very early days in terms of production so £200 gets you about 2 grams of the stuff, so it's pretty crazy expensive. The protein we're using in the ice cream reacts with your tongue at neutral PH, so without getting to science-y on you, basically as your mouth warms up the protein it will raise the PH level and start to glow."
While the experience sounds unique, it is not out of place to wonder if the glow will also make the ingester glow in the dark after they consume it, and if it is safe to consume. "Is it safe to eat? Well I tried some and I don't seem to be glowing anywhere, so we'll go with a yes for now," wrote Charlie Francis on his website. "We've also made a non-jellyfish version using quinine from tonic to make a glow in the UV dark gin and tonic sorbet which is pretty neat and can be ordered from all good Lick Me I'm Delicious event contraptions." Curious to find out if the jellyfish luminescence would be digested and make your feces glow-in-the-dark? We asked about that and simply put, the answer is no. "The luminescence has a limited life, so once consumed it ceases to glow," said Francis.
If you can't fathom the thought of shelling out that kind of money for a scoop of ice cream, then know there's a DIY alternative as well. "Jellyfish ice cream glows under its own light (i.e. it's light emitting). This is because of the luminescence protein we used," says Charlie Francis. "DIY recipe requires UV light to glow and this works because of the quinine in the tonic water used in the recipe." The recipe is as follows: Warm 400ml tonic water with the 400g caster sugar over a low heat, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Pour in an additional 400ml of tonic water and 4 tbsp. gin. Transfer to an ice cream mixer and leave to freeze. Serve under a UV light and enjoy your delicious glowing snow cone.
Charlie Francis, who grew up on an ice cream farm in Wale, shared with Latin Times that the glow-in-the-dark ice cream has been receiving a lot of interest from around the world. Additionally, the glow-in-the-dark ice cream is not licensed to be sold commercial and according to Francis, will "take a couple of years to push through." As for the future endeavors of the ice cream entrepreneur, he shares in a press release: "I really want to develop an invisible ice cream, it's inherently impossible because of the refraction caused by the ice crystals which make up the ice cream, but I reckon we'll find a way of doing it."
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