For lovers of ice cream, it is good to try a product recently developed by UGM students. This ice cream is worth a try because it is made from fully-nutritious vegetables and herbs. The ice cream labeled Herbatic ‘(Herbal Vegetable Ice Cream) was created from the creativity of students of Faculty of Agricultural Technology. They are Elok Pawening Maharani, Sari Yuslia, Arif Sugianto, Anisa Dian Safitri, and Aryo Dwi Nugroho.
According to Elok Pawening, the selection of vegetables and herbs as raw materials was originated from their concern due to the low interest of Indonesian people for taking herbal medicine. Most of the ingredients are only used as spice in cooking and herbal medicine. "Herb is healthy beverage, but it is not practical and less interesting for the community. Therefore, we try to make innovation in more interesting packaging of ice cream, a product that is considered preferable by all people," she said on Friday (1/6) on campus.
Herbatic is created by combining the juice of red beans and herbs. The combination makes it appropriate alternative solution in supporting the diversification of local food for vegetarians, diabetics, lactose intolerant people, the low-fat diet group, and herbs lovers. "In general, ice cream is made from animal fats, such as from cow’s milk, so it is restricted for people with lactose intolerance, people on diet, and vegetarians. However, we use extract of red beans instead of cow’s milk that is safe for those groups to be consumed," she said.
Elok explained that Herbatic ice cream is healthy for the ginger, temulawak, turmeric, and Kaempferia galanga containing active substance essential oils, zingerone, anti-microbial, antioxidants, polyphenols, curcumin, shogaol, geraniol, and alkaloids. "This compound is very healthy for the body," Elok said.
Sari Yuslia added red beans and herbs contain very low glycemic index, which is 22-32. Low glycemic makes Herbatic safe food for diabetics. Red beans and herbs are digested slowly causing blood sugar to rise slowly. "So, it takes less insulin than most carbohydrate-rich foods," she explained.
Herbatic is referred to as herbal ice cream product because it uses red beans extract in the making, it does not use eggs, butter, and gelatin. "Margarine is replaced by butter and gelatin is replaced by cornstarch so that this ice cream is very innovative and different from others in the market," Sari promoted the product.
How to make this ice cream is fairly simple, like ice cream in general. The making begins by boiling the beans to take the extract. Furthermore, red bean extract is processed along with the margarine, sugar, jelly powder, vanilla, salt, and natural flavorings such as ginger, temulawak, Kaempferia galanga , turmeric, tamarind, and secang.
To create a Herbatic prescription needs 800 ml of red beans extract, 150 grams of sugar and other additional ingredients. One prescription generates 18-20 cups (@ 90 ml). "Within a month we usually make three times of production," Anisa added.
In one week, they are able to sell up to 90 cups of Herbatic ice cream at a price 3,500 rupiah per cup. Temporarily, Herbatic is only marketed on a limited basis in the Faculty cafeteria, Resto Vegan Somayoga, Bodhicitta Maitreya Vihara, and Plaza Agro Minimarket. Flavors are varied, ranging from ginger, tamarind, Kaempferia galanga, temulawak to red ginger. "In addition to full of nutrition for using herbal ingredients, Herbatic is also made without preservatives," Anisa said.
If a buyer wants ice cream with toppings, he can request for jams such as chocolate, blueberries and strawberry. So, are you interested in trying?