"I decided very quickly that dogfooding just didn't sound very appealing. We started to change the name of it and calling it 'ice-creaming' now," says Tony Scott, Microsoft's CIO in charge of renaming stupid shit that nobody cares about instead of working on more important things. [Techflash]

Image credit ulterior epicure

The recipe is as simple as can be: grab a flower pot, toss in some chocolate ice cream, add gummy worms (or gummy bears if you're feeling odd), throw on some crushed up brownies, maybe a few chocolate chips, and stick in a flower or two. Ta Da. Instant Rosa bait. [The Pioneer Woman Cooks via Worth the Whisk]

Wylie Dufresne is one of the preeminent experimental chefs in America. He deconstructs the food that we're familiar with and then, using tools and ingredients that are rarely seen in restaurant kitchens, builds them back up in near-unrecognizable forms. His amazing eggs benedict, for example, features deep fried cubes of hollandaise sauce and a little cylinder of egg yolk the texture of fudge.

So I was clearly excited to see where the magic happened in his kitchen, and I wasn't disappointed. Over the course of this week I'll be posting the videos I shot during my kitchen tour, starting with how Wylie uses liquid nitrogen. In it, he shows me how he uses the stuff to create perfectly spherical balls of ice cream surrounded by chocolate cookie crumbs. Because the microphone on the Flip video camera I used is about as good as the mic on a rotary phone, a transcript of the video is below.

What's getting a lot of sway right now with urban chefs is liquid nitrogen. Liquid nitrogen, much the same way you can a use hot oil to fry things at 375 degrees, with liquid nitrogen you can freeze things at about minus 275 degrees. And you know, people get excited because it's so cold that when it's exposed to the air it turns into a gas, which is a very Hollywood or rock and roll sort of thing.

[Pastry chef Alex] takes more or less sort of a cookie, he would kill me if I said this, but not all that far off from sort of an Oreo cookie, purees it, adds some fat to it, purees it into a liquid phase. Then they take ice cream, milk flavored ice cream. They pipe the milk ice cream into a bowl of liquid nitrogen. So it gets super frozen and from there they drop it into the liquid cookie and they roll it after that in cookie crumbs. And what happens is the ice cream is so cold it instantly sets a shell, even though its in a liquid, on the outside and then they can scoop it out and roll it in some crumbs. And then you get, you know, whatever they call those Dibs or Dabs that you get at the movies. This is a much better, much more high end version.

Taste Test is our weeklong tribute to the leaps that occur when technology meets cuisine, spanning everything from the historic breakthroughs that made food tastier and safer to the Earl-Grey-friendly replicators we impatiently await in the future.

The whole thing is purely conceptual for now; it involves certain bacteria and ice nucleation and a lot of other science-y sounding words and phrases I don't understand. What I do understand is the phrase "It will snow ice cream," and what I wish I didn't understand is "The technology is a long ways off." Don't be fooled by the existence of an actual Cloud Project van—it's purely for illustrative purposes, and only functions as a regular ice cream truck/science information center.

Next up: Spaghetti. With a chance of meatballs. Get it? [The Cloud Project via Likecool

On one hand, the NitroCream N2-G4 needs no freezers or water lines. It's incredibly simple, just mixing liquid nitrogen in with your sugar cream base. On the other, it's pretty much a glorified Kitchen Aid mixer with a liquid nitrogen pump.

But OK, my dark consumer heart still craves this gadget that will put your fancy Italian espresso maker to shame, while simultaneously eliminating the risk of me going all T1000 during the dessert course.

In custom configurations reaching $75,000, the NitroCream N2-G4 is available to both restaurant kitchens and those who own kitchens that rival restaurants'. [NitroCream via Bornrich]

Now I can't speak for everyone here, but frankly, I'm a little sick of Apple's incremental iPod updates. Luckily for me, there's still a bit of crazy, no-holds-barred ingenuity in the world—and that ingenuity can be found in the labs of Norwegian ice cream maker Henning Olsen.

Not only is their take on the iPod Classic made of chocolate and ice cream—I'm sorry, that should read "CHOCOLATE AND ICE CREAM!!!"—but each bar will come with a free song from a Norwegian artist.

Now Apple, I'm not sure that these little icePods of heaven are formally licensed. But mark my words, if you take down a poor, defenseless icePod manufacturer who wants to do nothing more than use your IP for delicious commercial gain, you'd better come out with an icePod Chocolate of your own. And I'm not talking about just painting a nano brown, buddy. [Dagbladet via TUAW]

Not only does it have tons of slots for holding various flavors of ice cream, there's a ring of light for proper illumination. Of course, the entire thing pivots and turns so it can service anybody at any time. I believe my office needs one. [Design Boom]

UPI reports that the unidentified man, who lives in Frankston, Australia, claims he ate Bubble O'Bill ice cream (pictured above), right before blowing into the breathalyzer, which caused the false positive. Afterwards went before a court asking to have the breathalyzer removed from his car.

The court decided to verify the error with a second test. Without eating the Ice Cream, the man's BAC was .0000. Immediately after taking two bites, it was .0018. The man got his wish, and the breathalyzer was removed. But the larger cause for concern here is what he did to get stuck with the breathalyzer in the first place? And what will he do now that he's no longer shackled to the buzz killer? [UPI via Tech Dirt via Prefix Forums]

A portion of the profits from this flavor are going to support research investigating, among other things, whether or not cellphones are responsible for the shrinking bee population; 40% of all the natural flavors Haagen Dazs uses in its stuff depend on the critters for their creation. After finishing one pint, I went back to the store, and bought the remaining quantities on the shelf. UPDATE: Yes, it is just that delicious that I can justify writing a Gizmodo post about it. And OMG Ponies is telling me that the cellphone radiation and bee killing correlation has been long debunked. [Haagen Dazs]

[Ideashow via Nerd Approved]

Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.

What I want to know is why they went with the name Wanko. [Gizmodo Japan through Google Translate]

Product Page [Ben & Jerry via Lifehacker]

"Would you like to check out Yahoo's services for some free ice cream?"
"Oh, I have to look at their products or something?"
"Yeah...or you can just get the free ice cream."

Sold. – Mark Wilson

As Brian and I were unboxing the Wii and PS3, Nintendo dropped the bomb on us. A bomb filled with creamsicles, fudge pops, and good humor.

Oh yes, dear readers, just when we were ecstatic about having a Wii, Nintendo delivers us a second Wii via Ice Cream courier. Cool? Very. Delicious, definitely. They even spotted us some ice cream sandwiches. Thanks Erin! Mmmmm, mmmm, good. Twin Wii's? Yes, we're twice blessed. (Both the east and west coast Gizmodo Wiis got delivered to the SF HQ by accident, if you were wondering.)

Click to the jump to see the Awesome Ice Cream Truck in Action.

– Jason Chen

It screws onto any soda bottle, and a straw connects the bottom of the cup to its dome-shaped lid. When you squeeze the bottle, the root beer (or the soda of your choice) fizzes up through the straw and mixes with the ice cream in the 8-ounce twist-on cup on top. It's a volcano of fizzy, root beer float goodness. Or, you can keep the ice cream separate from the drink, giving you a choice of just drinking soda, just eating ice cream, or mixing them together. They're six for $15.98. – Charlie White

Product Page [Primal Image]