Liquid Nitrogen and my big photoshoot

Let's start with the liquid nitrogen. I've been wanting to play with this for a while and finally bought the storage container. Most of the uses I've seen so far have been gimmicky - meaning not really enhancing the food itself, but you know I'll obsess until I can find a good way to use it.

Liquid Nitrogen has been around (in culinary useful form) since the 1800s, but its resurgence has been just in recent years due to the molecular gastronomy movement. What intrigues me most is the possibility of freezing booze. Imagine a frozen sphere of rum set inside of a chocolate shell...or what if it was set in side of a coconut milk shell that had been made by freezing it in the LN. The idea is that booze will freeze at that temp, but once in a regular freezer it will thaw, leaving you with a liquid center. Opens up the mind doesn't it?

Here's I'm testing my photoshoot dessert to see if I can form a stable shell using the actual dessert mousse. It didn't work because the shell thawed too quickly.

This is an old trick where you fill a ladle with ice cream base, freeze it for a few seconds and then you have a bowl made out of the ice cream that you can fill...before it melts...this is a recurring problem.

I did the old standby of 30 second ice cream, and yes it was amazingly smooth and may show up on special occasions at the restaurant.

Not fully understanding the boiling properties of liquid nitrogen I was intrigued by the eruptions caused by placing my frozen dessert inside of a ladle of ice cream base. The base erupted needing a place for gases to release.

All of this was final play before a photo shoot for Dessert Professional magazine. I've submitted my rootbeer float dessert for publication and it appears to have been accepted. Since TasteSpotting and FoodGawker both think my pics suck, I went to a professional to make sure the pics were magazine worthy. I'll post some of the pics and the updated recipe over the weekend.