Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream

I managed to convince others in the lab to try some liquid nitrogen ice cream because I've heard it's pretty good. I found a recipe online and gave it a try.

1L whole milk (3.5%)
1 cup sugar
3 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

First you heat 3/4 L of milk till it simmers and with the remaining milk you add the sugar and cornstarch. Then add it to the remaining simmering milk and stir until it is thick (about 10 to 12 minutes). Then add the vanilla extract and cool the entire thing on ice.

Then we got the liquid nitrogen in a regular thermos and started working on making ice cream. While blending the mixture in a cooking pot with a hand mixer my labmate slowly poured in the liquid nitrogen. There was a lot of smoke but the entire process worked reasonably well.

The only thing we needed to be careful about was some of the liquid nitrogen splashing around and to make sure we moved the liquid nitrogen around because right below where you were pouring it would freeze solid. For 1 L of milk we needed about 1.5 L of liquid nitrogen.

 Combined with some strawberries and a homemade caramel sauce we had a very tasty dessert. The ice cream was fantastic, smooth rich and creamy.

Then it was time to open a bottle of champagne. I've never done it before and my labmates made fun of me for being so scared of the noise.