Parlour Games: DIY Ice Cream

Ice cream is going back to basics. Way back.

Though people have been making some version of the frozen treat since as early as 200 B.C., we don't tend to think of ice cream as something you can easily whip up at home. We usually leave the hard work to the Bens and Jerrys of the world.

But Ploenpit Nittaramorn isn't impressed the multitude of flavors offered by the modern ice cream joints. The Central Saint Martins student wanted to question why we rely so heavily on machine-made and prepared food, and so she created the Ice Cream Concept Parlour. Using basic wooden utensils, cone glass containers, and an ice-cold marble plate, Ploenpit shows how you can transform simple ingredients into a spectacularly fresh dessert.

"Ice cream Concept Parlour is designed to explore and investigate the process of making ready-to-eat food, ice cream," explains the artist on her website. Fed up with the reliance on ready-made food, Ploenpit's project deconstructs an everyday grocery store item, and in the process, she reveals the distance that separates us from our food. "People become less aware of their connections to food they eat, less consideration of what and how the food made of and where the food from and refuses to invest time to appreciate cooking process as the shortcut is available in every local supermarket," she writes.

And it doesn't hurt that the project itself is a design treat. In a video posted on Vimeo, you can watch as Ploenpit pours the cream base onto a frozen marble plate and patiently scrapes and whips until she has a single serving of ice cream. Though you don't see it in the video, she also squeezes fruits by hand, mashes nuts, and infuses flavor into the mixture. As part of her graduation show, she has been serving students flavors like Mojito Sorbet and Singha Beer.

While we're not going to purge our fridge of Haagan Dazs, Ploenpit's arty project is a cool reminder of what can be done with the right ingredients and a little patience. Color us impressed.

Icecream Parlour by Ploenpit Nittaramorn from Home Build Life