Making It

Daerry’s Tilapia Ice Cream

THE PEOPLE:

Tereso Abella and Dana Vera Cruz

THE PRODUCT:

An award-winning innovative take on dessert THEIR STORY: Yes, you read that right. And to answer your next question, tilapia ice cream tastes like regular ice cream, though with an interesting and surprisingly pleasant texture

The tilapia ice cream is the brainchild of Central Luzon State University president Tereso Abella, who dreamt up the project, and CLSU assistant professor Dana Vera Cruz, who developed the recipe for the product. The novel project won the Innovation Gold Award at the Salon International de L’Agroalimentaire ASEAN Manila last August, and as the winner, the ice cream has gone on tour throughout the world, winning over curious tasters in Paris, Canada, China, Indonesia, and the Middle East.

It all started as an experiment to look for new products that feature tilapia. The CLSU, one of the leading agricultural institutions in the Philippines, champions tilapia as the high-quality tilapia, and since it is nutritious and widely consumed, Abella believes in the future of tilapia as a key product for the country. The ice cream is, for now, merely a way to get

“It’s locally produced as a specialty product at CLSU, but we have to scale up the production. Many people are asking for it. Even in the US, they saw that the product was interesting after we were featured on The Filipino Channel. It really has market potential,” says Abella.

“We are still working on commercializing it,” Vera Cruz says. “When we started this, it was for research purposes only. But as part of our consumer testing, [we found] that once people tasted it, they wanted more. There was word of mouth, especially through social media, and winning the award helped, too.”

up as an award-winning desert? “Nahihirapan kami because of the demand,” she adds. “It’s a sweet problem to have.”

DAERRY’S TILAPIA ICE CREAM

is available at Central Luzon State University. For information, contact tel. no. (044) 940-0510 or mobile no. 0906-3842928.