Scotland's first glow in the dark ice cream created for light festival

Natural ingredients were used to give the delicacy its glow in the dark look.

Scotland’s first glow in the dark ice cream created by Mackie’s for Aberdeen Light Festival Ross Johnston/Newsline Media

Scotland’s first ever glow in the dark ice cream has been created to celebrate a popular light festival.

Aberdeenshire-based brand Mackie’s have released the luminous dessert ahead of the 10th anniversary of the Spectra Light Festival in Aberdeen.

The family-run company came up with the idea for the “Light Up” flavour of ice cream, with a lemon sherbet taste, using natural ingredients.

The tasty treat lights up under UV light was created by Pauline MacLeod, new product development technologist at the company.

She added riboflavin, one of eight types of Vitamin B, to give the ice cream its glow in celebration of the festival.

The limited edition flavour will be available for those attending at Mackies 19.2 parlour situated next to Spectra.

The glow in the dark dessert will be available at the festival. Photo by Ross Johnston/Newsline Media

Mrs MacLeod said: “We wanted to do something memorable to celebrate the festival, and what better way than a glowing ice cream?

“Despite it looking unusual, it’s totally safe to eat, and made using natural ingredients. We also felt a flavour like lemon sherbet perfectly summed up this treat, which has had glowing reviews from the staff who have tried it!”

Yvette Harrison, the manager of the parlour who had the initial idea for the ice cream, said: “To have such a unique ice cream available for ice cream lovers over the weekend is really exciting.

“On top of the delicious taste, it brings a real wow factor, which fits in wonderfully with the Light Festival next door, with customers taking part by placing their ice creams under the light to see it glow.

“I was inspired by a friend who is featuring in the festival this weekend, and was really impressed that Pauline was able to start experimenting and manage to bring it to life in time for the festival.

“We’re confident it will be a big hit across the weekend.”

The Aberdeenshire-based firm expect the product to be a big hit at the Spectra Light Festival. Photo by Ross Johnston/Newsline Media

Stuart Common, managing director at Mackie’s of Scotland said: “We take our job of creating tasty, premium sweet treats very seriously at Mackie’s, but the beauty of the ice cream industry is that there is always scope to have a little bit of fun.

“Not only are we really excited to be launching a new limited-edition product at such a well-attended event, we’re overall just very proud of the team for executing and delivering a technically challenging idea, which has resulted in a brilliant end result. We’re sure festival-goers will agree!”

The Spectra festival will run from Thursday, February 8 until Sunday, February 11 across various venues in the city centre.

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