Credit: Cocinatis

Spanish physicist, engineer, professor and ice cream lover Manuel Linares has together with a couple of colleagues created an ice cream that changes colors when it's licked—in a cone. Not content with the life of a physics professor, Linares signed up for training with Asociación Empresarial Nacional de Elaboradores Artesanos y Comerciantes de Helados y Horchatas—a craftsmen and businessmen association in Spain that offers mentored coursework.

Linares pursued what he has described as a "Masters Diploma in Creating Artisan Ice Cream." Intrigued by the ice that changes color under fluorescent lights, created by Charlie Francis, Linares set his sights on figuring out a way to create a type of ice cream that would change color in response to temperature changes and acids found in the human mouth. He enlisted the assistance of a couple of unnamed buddies and they all got to work in a lab that Linares put together with his own funds. Linares has told the press that it took the three of them just one week to come up with the color changing ice cream. The final product, which reportedly has a similar taste to tutti-frutti, has been named Xamaleón.

The color changing comes about, some suspect due to the types of fruit that are used—plus a secondary ingredient, a spritz called the "love elixir" that gets sprayed onto the ice cream after its been scooped into a cone, which Linares has hinted, accelerates the color changing process. It starts out as periwinkle blue, then changes to pink and eventually becomes purple, as it's licked.

The ice cream is made of all natural materials, Linares has revealed, but other than listing some of the normal ingredients found in regular ice cream, he's kept mum. That's because he has big plans for the ice cream. He's already opened a shop in Blanes, his hometown, with the goal of creating many more types of exotic ice cream, such as a variety that mimics the ice created by Francis, and another he's already named Xamán—it will be made with Peruvian and African medicinal plants which will supposedly provide an aphrodisiac effect.

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