(REUTERS) - Ice cream is popular the world over - but the saturated fat it contains raises cholesterol, risking heart disease and strokes.

Making the tasty treat with unsaturated fat is the Holy Grail for ice cream makers and University of Copenhagen researcher Merete Bøgelund Munk is developing methods to do just that.

She is testing ways to make unsaturated fat oil droplets form networks without the presence of fat crystals - a crucial part of conventional ice cream structure.

Munk elaborated: "Saturated vegetable fat is solid. What I'm trying to do is to make ice cream with liquid oil. But it is important that to create a structure in the ice cream, to stabilise the ice cream, it is important that the lipid is solid and therefore we are structuring the liquid oil into solid fat by adding some structuring molecules."

The research is being carried out in conjunction with Scandinavian fat supply giants AAK.

They will test the new techniques at production scale in January, adding flavour to the mix.

AAK may seek to commercialise the technology - once researchers have got the technique licked.