Molecular Root Beer Float

Lately I have been experimenting with new molecular recipes and this is one of the recipes I created. One of my best friends loves when I make caviar for molecular recipes and he kept urging me to make caviar with soda. I decided to tried it and it worked really well. This makes a beautiful small appetizer for formal parties and other events. The two food additives you will need for this recipe are agar agar and soy lecithin. I use agar flakes which can be purchased at whole foods and the soy lecithin that I use was purchased from amazon.com for about $8.00. You will aslso need an oil for this recipe. I prefer to use olive oil because it freezes fast but any kind will work. All of the oil will wash off so the quality of the oil doesn't matter. Enjoy!

Step 1: Ingredients

Ingredients:
Soy Lecithin
Agar Agar
Rootbeer
Vanilla Ice cream
Vanilla extract
Sugar
Olive Oil (any kind of oil will work but olive oil freezes faster) \

Materials:
Immersion Blender
Pan
Bowl
Jar
Syringe
Collander
Spoon or melon baller

Step 2: Root Beer Caviar

Fill a jar at least halfway with olive oil and place in freezer for about half an hour. In a small pan boil 1 cup of rootbeer and then add 1/2-1 tbs of agar agar. Whisk together for 1-2 minutes or until the agar agar has dissolved. Remove the pan from the heat and wait a few minutes for the rootbeer to cool. Remove the olive oil from the freezer and fill a syringe with root beer. Hold the syringe over the jar parallel to the table. Slowly squirt the root beer out of the syringe. They should look like little spheres once they are submerged in the olive oil. Once all of the root beer is gone, use a collander to strain the root beer caviar. Rinse with water until all of the olive oil is has been washed off. Place in a bowl and set aside.

Step 3: Root Beer Foam

There are three components to root beer floats: Ice cream, root beer, and foam. I am not sure why it happens but when the rootbeer mixes with the ice cream it always makes a foam that stays on the top of the root beer float. Because of this I thought it was very important to make some kind of a root beer foam to go on the ice cream. In a large bowl i whisked together 3 tbs of sugar, 1/2 cup of milk, 2 tbs of root beer, 1 tbs of vanilla extract and 1^1/2  tsp of soy lecithin. Then I used an immersion blender to turn the mixture into foam. It took about 5 minutes before it was really foamy.

Step 4: Presentation

Use a melon baller or spoon to scoop a tiny scoop of ice cream and then place it in the small bowl or spoon you have chosen to present the root beer float in. Poor a little spoonful of the root beer foam over the ice cream and then add the root beer caviar. Enjoy!