Putting more yummy into ice cream

– He’s the new wizard of French ice cream who is sending a chill down the spine of traditionalists.

David Wesmael has nothing against a scoop of well-made gelato or a cone of whipped ice cream. But the restless innovator is taking a blowtorch to the “archaic” conventions which he claims have left ice cream frozen in the past.

His creations often skate daringly over the thin line between ice cream and the more sophisticated domain of French patisserie.

Biting through the thin chocolate shell of one of his ice cream bars, flavours and textures explode – from crunchy praline to runny caramel and vanilla spiked with lemon confit.

“There are so many things you can do with ice cream – more perhaps in terms of texture and taste than even with patisserie,” he said in the chill of his laboratory in the northern French city of Lille.

“There is infinite potential and so many possibilities which have yet to be explored in ice cream making,” said the former star pastry chef.

From his spherical vacherins of filled meringue to ice cream bonbons, bars and tubes which can be cut into slices, Wesmael is determined to give the summer treat a place at the top table of haute cuisine.

“I am trying to do something different and show that ice cream is not something that just comes in a pot or a cornet,” he said.

It’s a chilly 11oC in his lab, but his artisan “glaciers” are not feeling the cold in their white coats.

Every second out of the freezer counts when you are piping a chilled hazelnut and almond praline on to shortbread in a bar mould.

The same speed and precision is needed for the next step, of floating the caramel and candied lemon-in-vanilla ice cream, so that the middle melts as soon as you bite through the crisp coating.

Wesmael also loves making the standard ice creams that he himself calls “archaic”.

But even with traditional ice creams and sorbets, he adds his own touch, decorating every tub by hand and coming up with new flavours every week for his shops in Paris and Lille, from strawberry and red pepper to spritz and even vanilla, celery and lemon.

When it comes to miraculously transforming raw materials, “nothing beats ice cream and sorbet”, Wesmael argued.

It was this alchemy and the untapped potential that tempted him away from pure patisserie, which has undergone a huge renaissance in France.

Even his standard vanilla ice cream is the product of research, mixing pods from Madagascar and New Caledonia to get a “stronger and longer-lasting flavour”.

Pistachio is the best-selling ice cream in both his shops. But he is most proud of his tubes, which are easy to cut and can survive out of the freezer for two hours. – AFP