Exploring the newest innovations in dessert technology by Melis A. '08

How many desserts can one consume in 2 ½ hours? Five MIT students decided to find out, while celebrating a 21st birthday. We had three stops on our journey, one which would take us across Boston and involve the consumption of an immeasurable amount of calories. (OK, Dad, I know you hate when I fixate on food, but it’s all in the name of science.)

We began at Truly Jorg’s Patisserie in Kenmore Square, which had some of the coolest wedding cakes I’ve ever seen! We sampled 6 desserts, pictured below.

Next stop, Beard Papa’s at Faneuil Hall, home of the “world’s best cream puffs.” We tried the vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry cream puffs, with and without chocolate on top. They fill the puffs with your choice of custard right before your eyes. The custard recipe was discovered in Japan and now they’re found all over the world!

The final stop was Trani in the North End. Get this….there are shelves after shelves of different pastries just waiting to be injected with ice cream! They opened the store in July and boy, what a great concept. We had two chocolate fudge cupcakes, two yellow cupcakes, and an apple turnover…all injected with vanilla and chocolate ice cream. Yum…delicious, my favorite was the chocolate cupcake with chocolate ice cream. Being MIT students, we also analyzed the chemical and mechanical engineering required for such a restaurant. They had this really nifty chocolate fudge dribbling machine that transported the ice cream-injected pastry on a little conveyor belt. The result: a perfectly chocolate covered creation. I guess the trick is using cold-ish chocolate, otherwise you’d melt the ice cream inside. Yea, haven’t figured that one out yet…

Anyway, it was great, and definitely a wonderful break from psetting and scholarship applications.