How To: Make Your Own Dippin' Dots Ice Cream with Liquid Nitrogen

Dippin' Dots are a fun way to enjoy ice cream, but the price tag is not so fun. Plus, the company filed for bankruptcy last year, so they may not be around much longer. The good news is that you don't need them—you can make your own at home with some ice cream and liquid nitrogen.

Redditor hypoid77 posted instructions on how to make your own DIY Dippin' Dots Maker out of a Styrofoam cooler, a couple two-liter bottles, a thumbtack, and some liquid nitrogen.

Use the thumbtack to poke a 3-inch patch of holes on each side of the bottles. Make two notches in a piece of cardboard for the bottle necks to rest on, and duct tape it to the cooler to make a frame. Then, use a ruler to draw a fill line 3 inches from the bottom of the cooler. That's it for the maker, now it's time to make some Dippin' Dots.

Fill the cooler to the fill line with liquid nitrogen. Pour any two flavors of melted ice cream into the bottles and put the caps back on. The ice cream will drip through the holes and freeze into tiny dots in the liquid nitrogen. You'll need to rotate the bottles halfway through and stir the dots around every now and then. Once all the ice cream has dripped through, remove the dots with a ladle or slotted spoon and you're done!

As hypoid77 notes, the liquid nitrogen will actually make these too cold to eat at first, so give them a few minutes to warm up before you dig in.

If you don't have a cooler, or just don't want to bother with the maker, you can do the same thing with a few bowls and syringes like isaachonda did in the video below.

For more details, check out hypoid77's tutorial and the original thread on Reddit.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to do this without liquid nitrogen?