Last month I wrote about things that start off seeming awesome, and then end up being even more awesome.  If I had known then that I was going to be at Sweet Freeze last week, I would have held off to include that as the prime example.  Sweet Freeze is ice cream (frozen custard, actually) made with liquid nitrogen, causing it to freeze quickly and giving it an incredibly smooth texture.

The only thing better than eating the ice cream was watching it being made.  I thought the liquid nitrogen was pretty cool as it turned into a cold mist that filled the space around the ice cream bowls.  (The last time I had played with liquid nitrogen was in the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope at the peak of Mauna Kea.)  But that was even before I saw the Sweet Freeze proprietor, Faith, use a blowtorch to keep the ice cream from freezing to sides of the metal bowl.

Fire, liquid nitrogen, ice cream.  So far, so good, right?  But it got even better: ice cream, liquid nitrogen, fire, and surrounded by robots.