Freezing Cranberries in the Middle of an Ice Cube

On a recent "Cranberry Lime Whisky Sour" photo set up, I wanted to have a little something extra on-hand to place around the scene — for styling and staging purposes, and thought — freezing a couple of cranberries in the middle of some ice cubes would be really cool!

Now, I've been close to a cranberry bog before. I almost had the chance to get into a cranberry bog once. I "know" that cranberries float, and yet — somehow I didn't quite connect the physics that would come into play when trying to suspend a couple of these little berries in the middle of an ice cube.

On my first attempt, I just filled up an ice cube tray, plopped in a couple of berries and waited. Well, not only were the cranberries not "in" the middle of the ice cube, but almost all of them were very nearly pushed completely out of the cubes — almost as if they were being pushed out of the freezing water as the cube formed.

My second attempt was quite a bit more successful. I only filled each block in the ice cube tray 1/3 of the way… which was a very small amount of water! I placed two berries in each block, and then waited 24 hours. The whole idea here was to try and use the first freezing as "glue" to hold the berries down in what would eventually become the middle of the cube.

I then took some almost freezing water and filled up the ice cube tray to the top and quickly put it back into the freezer. Hopefully, the new cold water wouldn't melt the first round of ice, thereby trapping the little berries in the middle of the cube — making it appear they were floating in mid-cube!

Well, it worked!!! Yay!!! The first round of ice didn't melt and the berries stayed in place!!! I also managed to get some really cool macro photos of the ice melting around those berries — once the "Cranberry Lime Whisky Sour" photo was finished.


Because freezing stuff in the middle of ice is just plain fun — next time, I'd like to try this with a perfectly square ice cube tray and blocks that are maybe a little larger. I like the look a lot because it produces a component that has some elevation and height to it, and it's a fun way to show some of the drink components in a very unique way.