Lights, camera, action!
In full swing during a recent Vogue photo shoot, you might be expecting that the photogs were aiming at posing, wan models showing off the latest modern and exorbitantly-priced fashions. Things were a little different this time however, as the subject was frozen superfood in the form of a gourmet dessert made with the finest, most perfectly prepared ingredients. This food also happens to be, yes, popsicles!
These, created by three creative guys all who happen to be named David, are certainly not the popsicles of your happy childhood memories. And they certainly are not the type you are going to see your kids rushing in from playing in the backyard to make themselves, slopping ‘ingredients’ all over the countertops. Not today anyway. What Vogue took time out to capture, mouths most certainly all watering, is indeed the frozen delight of the future.
Dream Pops is a company that understands what today’s upscale market is interested in eating, even when indulging in a treat. The puree for their popsicles is a healthy eater’s delight, stamped organic, gluten-free, and even vegan. Created with items such as coconut palm sugar, tapioca, agave, and baobab, the desserts are made with a much different, and quite unexpected process too: using 3D printed silicone shapes, made on an Ultimaker 3D printer, the team then has them formed into metal molds. The puree is poured into these molds and then cooled at an accelerated rate with liquid nitrogen.
Dream Pops was founded by David Marx, David Greenfeld, and David Cohen. And having help from a three-star Michelin chef like Juan Amador, good friend to Marx, certainly helps. As the idea originally came to mind for Marx in an effort to bring joy to the world—and himself—Amador liked the idea too and helped him come up with some unique recipes that they consider to be avante-garde yet inviting.
“This is not easy,” notes Cohen. “Nobody has done this before. You cannot cut corners. Every flavor, every ingredient matters.”
The Dream Pops team has been refining their idea now for four years, and in 2014, Marx even gave a TedX talk on their budding product, in Berlin. There, he presented a new popsicle to the audience—one that can be healthy and delicious, rather than filled with corn syrup and offering the more traditional and abysmal experience.
“There has not been much development around ice cream in the last 100 years,” he stated in his talk. “On the contrary, its quality and design has declined, which stands in contrast to a globally increasing wish for much better food.”
You’ll probably agree heartily with Marx too—if you’ve been down the ice cream aisle lately—that these treats today are generally both boring and unhealthy. He was spurred on by change in his life, both wonderful and tragic, to follow his passion. Eschewing suits and Power-Point presentations, Marx decided to devote his life to the creation of beautiful food.
As Labor Day approaches, autumn air begins to creep into the mornings and late afternoons, and summer begins to slip away in a bittersweet fashion—the cool treats Marx and his team have created certainly look incredibly tantalizing for a get together or after-dinner sweets, made all the more exciting with such new technology and the idea of that rapid nitrogen chilldown.
I don’t think the neighborhood kids are going to be clamoring for these popsicles after a game of dodgeball in the backyard anytime soon—but then again, there would probably be an ix-nay on the vegan, healthy route, as well as enticing adult flavors like the tequila-infused Casa Dream (created in a collaboration with Casamigos tequila).
This is certainly not the first 3D printed food—or dessert—we’ve discovered, following everything from high-tech fabrications in cookies and chocolate to 3D printed candy, but it’s definitely a modern new spin on a food most of us have known and enjoyed our whole lives, accepting it as a rather ordinary treat, accentuated by its alluring frozen state that offers such relief during the heat waves of July and August.
The future looks bright already for this more grownup popsicle too, just officially set into motion this year. Dream Pops set up a launch event earlier in the week, hosting a pool party at a mansion in the Hollywood Hills. Guests enjoyed fun in the sun, a DJ, cocktails and tacos—and of course, the featured ‘superfood’ was an array of Dream Pops—met with raving reviews by guests.
Along with the Casamigos partnership, Dream Pops is now also working with Versace, for whom they’ve made classy logoed 3D printed molds to emboss the tantalizing popsicles to be served at the very fancy Palazzo Versace Dubai hotel.
“Why settle for vanilla or chocolate?” asks Marx. “At the crossroads of avant-garde ingredients, new flavors, and cutting-edge design, our product becomes the ice cream of the future.”
Discuss further over in the 3D Printing for Dream Pops forum at 3DPB.com.
[Source: Vogue; LA Guestlist / Images: Rick Bhatia]
