July 2012 – FROZBROZ

July 26, 2012January 29, 2024

Cherry Pit Creme Fraiche with Rainier Cherry and Lemon Thyme

The summer of berries continue. This week is probably the peak for Rainier Cherries, so if you haven’t had any yet, get out and get some. We got ours at the Seward Co-op. While I have a love for all varieties, these are my perennial favorite, partially because we don’t see them for long when and if they get here. That isn’t to say that locally grown cherries aren’t fantastic, but I was in a pinch this week and couldn’t resist the chance to work with peak season Rainiers.

I only recently found out that cherry pits aren’t necessarily garbage, and can be used to give desserts a more intense cherry flavor with an almond-like twist when cracked and roasted and steeped or boiled into a syrup. Interestingly enough, it turns out the cherry pits are often used to make cheap almond extract which I always thought had tasted like cherries, and now I know why.

“BUT SOMEONE TOLD ME THEY’RE POISONOUS”, you might be saying. While this is technically true (they do contain a tiny amount of cyanogenic glycosides) you would need to eat a ton of them to get sick, and roasting or boiling them greatly reduces this risk (from what we’ve read). They are more commonly used in cooking around the country than you might think.

For this flavor, we boiled them into a simple syrup and steeped it with the pits.

While the cherry pit syrup was steeping, the cherries were cooked down with a little sugar and then steeped with some sprigs of lemon thyme.

The base was made with Creme Fraiche to substitute for some of the regular cream which added a nice sourness and paired wonderfully with the almondy cherry pit syrup.

Right before churning, a little fresh minced lemon thyme was added directly to the base as well.

The result is a dense cherry flavored ice cream with an incredibly silky texture from the creme fraiche and a nice tart kick from the sweet Rainier cherries and Lemon Thyme. Beautiful if we do say so ourselves.

Rockin’.

Only two will have it, my precious. As we do every week, we’ll be giving away two pints of this flavor. Just leave a comment on our facebook page to be entered into the drawing. If you don’t have a facebook account, leave a comment right here on the blog. We’ll draw two winners on Friday afternoon (7/27/2012) at 4pm and will announce them on our facebook page (or email you if you’re comment resides here). Our only conditions are you must be able to pick it up here in Minneapolis, and agree to give us a little feedback that can be shared with everyone else. And we’re serious about that. We’ll hunt you down for feedback. Get your food critic pants on – you might be the lucky winner and inquiring minds want an objective opinion. Good luck!

July 19, 2012

Port Black and Blueberry

Thanks to a fantastic season here in Minnesota, we are still rolling out new berry flavors. This week we’re combining the summer’s newest arrival, blackberries, with the steadily ripening blueberries. To boot, we’re throwing down a little port into the mix to really enhance the berry berriness of these berries.

Hoch Orchard Organic Blackberrries! Hoch, located in the hills of La Crescent, MN, is producing strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, cherries, apricots, plums and apples. You will find a variety of Hoch friuts and berries at your local Coop here in Minneapolis.

These blackberries are sweet, juicy and firm, the way blackberries are suppose to taste.

We were fortunate enough to score these gorgeous blueberries from a family friend’s garden back in our home state of Wisconsin. It didn’t take long to get them off the bush and into our ice cream.

The blackberries and blueberries get smashed up in a sauce pan, along with this port…

Graham Six Grapes port pairs perfectly with these dark berries. It’s bold, robust, and ripe with it’s own deep berry flavors.

They all get simmered down with brown sugar into thick jammy reduction that gets tossed right into the ice cream at the end of the churn. The result…

An intense black and blueberry ice cream with port.
FrozBroz Port Black and Blueberry ice cream!

It can be yours.. As we do every week, we’ll be giving away two pints of this flavor. Just leave a comment on our facebook page to be entered into the drawing. If you don’t have a facebook account, leave a comment right here on the blog. We’ll draw two winners on Friday afternoon (7/20/2012) at 4pm and will announce them on our facebook page (or email you if you’re comment resides here). Our only conditions are you must be able to pick it up here in Minneapolis, and agree to give us a little feedback that can be shared with everyone else. Good luck!

July 12, 2012

Deconstructed Blueberry Pie w/Charred Vanilla Bean

As a kid, my family would often spend a day of our summer vacation picking wild blueberries along a railroad track in northern Wisconsin, south of Hayward. We’d endure loads of mosquito bites and hoards of woodticks to earn a few gallon pails full of them, that would usually net a pie or two after we finished snacking. It was always one of my favorite pies, partially due to its rarity, but mostly because of the incredible sweetness and flavor combined with the dark blue hue of the macerated berries. I’ve mentioned these pie memories before – they are landmarks on my brain.

I hoped to get my hands on some of those very wild blueberries for this flavor, but I got the next best thing, which was these beauties from our recent fave Svihel farms from Foley, MN.

You might remember a few weeks ago when we released the Smoked Bourbon Vanilla Bean ice cream that we mentioned some discoveries while experimenting with vanilla beans on the grill. One of those discoveries was a charred version which we knew would give us a nice option so we preserved it for future use.

It paired wonderfully with the pie concept and made a nice dark fleck in the ice cream.

The blueberries were reduced with sugar, lemon, cinnamon and cardamom to create the “pie filling”.

Then there was the pie crust. Similar to the deconstructed pecan pie flavor we made last fall, the pie crust was baked off and broken up to go into the charred vanilla ice cream as an add in – floating throughout the pint.

The blueberry filling was layered into the pint to leave thick, ribbons of sticky blueberry jam.

It can be yours.. As we do every week, we’ll be giving away two pints of this flavor. Just leave a comment on our facebook page to be entered into the drawing. If you don’t have a facebook account, leave a comment right here on the blog. We’ll draw two winners on Friday afternoon (7/13/2012) at 4pm and will announce them on our facebook page (or email you if you’re comment resides here). Our only conditions are you must be able to pick it up here in Minneapolis, and agree to give us a little feedback that can be shared with everyone else. Good luck!

July 4, 2012

Orange with Raspberry Honey and Singing Hills Chevre

We are in full on berry season and this week it’s raspberries that are making their yearly ice cream debut. And since the berries are ripening fast, we need to get them while they’re hot and into the ice cream ASAPeronie. We’ve been talking to our friends down at Singing Hills Dairy about using some of their products in our ice cream and it seemed only fitting that this would be the week since chevre and raspberries make for a killer combo. Singing Hills Dairy, located in Nerstrand, MN, is a small 25 acre sustainable goat farm where Lynne Reeck and Kate Wall farm pasture raised goats. Lynne and Kate aren’t just goat farmers, they’re also cheesemakers, turning their high quality goat milk into a variety of plain and flavored chevres and fetas. Check them out, and please support them, Saturdays at the Mill City Farmers Market and Fulton Farmers Market and Sundays at the Kingfield Farmers Market. With that introduction, lets get to work on this week’s flavor: Orange with Raspberry Honey and Singing Hills Chevre.

We are lucky enough to have a few friends that sport quality raspberry patches right here in the city of Minneapolis. These beauties are sweet and plump and ready for your mouth.

As with most fruit and berries, we need to find a way to reduce or displace their moisture content. This week we decided to roast these raskelberries, condensing their flavors into pure raspberry tartness…raspberry bombs!

If you’re one to actually read our blog posts, you’ll know how much we love our Nordeast Nectars honey…liquid gold. We just featured them in last weeks flavor, Salt Bagel with Cream Cheese and Honey.

The Nordeast Nectars raw honey gets mixed together with our roasted raspberries and then layered into our pints during packaging.

Singing Hills Dairy plain Chevre! As we mentioned before, this is one of a few handfuls of artisanal goats milk cheeses they are making. Other chevres they offer include: Herbed, Garlic Pepper, Marinated, Honeyed, Cranberry Walnut, and Pesto Torte. This week we decided to use their plain, and wanted to try something that we’ve never tried before…

Using soft cheeses in the past, we’ve generally incorporated them into the ice cream base. We wanted to try and create pockets of cheese in the ice cream, so we start by scooping out small chunks of chevre onto a parchment lined sheet pan. Into the freezer so chunkersons would individually freeze. These frozen chunks get thrown into the ice cream at the end of the churn, and to our surprise they ended up staying relatively hard in the ice cream. They add a great texture contrast while offering the spectacularly clean tangy flavor of Singing Hills Chevre.

And lets not forget about our base flavor component: Orange! We add the zest of our oranges to our ice cream base which deepens the flavor pairing well with both the raspberries and the chevre.

Oh, it’s on! Berry season in full effect here at FrozBroz. You can see it all happening right here in our Orange with Raspberry Honey and Singing Hills Chevre.

Like to try some? As we do every week, we’ll be giving away two pints of this flavor. Just leave a comment on our facebook page to be entered into the drawing. If you don’t have a facebook account, leave a comment right here on the blog. We’ll draw two winners on Friday afternoon (7/6/2012) at 4pm and will announce them on our facebook page (or email you if you’re comment resides here). Our only conditions are you must be able to pick it up here in Minneapolis, and be willing to give us a little feedback that can be shared with everyone else. Good luck!