Dinner by Heston Blumenthal proving so popular that by November 2011, some 900 were being sold per week and the restaurant was aiming to increase production to be able to supply up to 1200 a week. During the Christmas period, the Meat Fruit is decorated to appear like a plum rather than a mandarin to accord with the holiday season. The ice cream trolley holds a contraption created by Blumenthal and his team, and constructed from Corian by Mike Smith Studio at a cost of £25,000. Powered by a hand crank, it mixes custard and liquid nitrogen to create instant ice cream at the
Freeze-dried ice cream Freeze-dried ice cream Freeze-dried ice cream is ice cream that has had most of the water removed from it by a freeze-drying process, sealed in a pouch, and requires no refrigeration. It is also known as astronaut ice cream or space ice cream, typically a slab of ready-to-eat dehydrated ice cream. Compared to regular ice cream, it can be kept at room temperature without melting and is more brittle and rigid but still soft when bitten into. It was developed by Whirlpool Corporation under contract to NASA for the Apollo missions. However, it was never used on any Apollo mission.