benny – Page 11

December 25, 2013

Manchego w/Zinfandel Caramel

Christmas is now in the rear view mirror as is most of 2013, which means New Years eve celebrations are almost upon us. New Years eve is synonymous with indulgence in good food, and good drinks, and like last year’s White Chocolate Pop Rocks w/ Champagne caramel, we wanted to do something apropos. Where I come from, no good party happens without a plate full of good cheese. Likewise, a plate full of good cheese pairs fantastically with good wine, and that brings us to this week’s flavor, Manchego w/ Zinfandel Caramel.

This flavor starts with my one of my favorite Spanish Manchego. Its a spanish cheese from the La Mancha region, and this particular selection is a raw milk manchego. Its buttery, with a nice salty bite and a great cheese-y flavor that pairs incredibly well with fruit and a bold red wine.

For the foundation of this flavor, the manchego went into the cream 2 ways- some was finely grated and melted into the base during the cooking process. More was coarsely grated and tossed in at the end to provide an extra oomph with the occasional bite of cheese.

The caramel begins as a standard sugar and water recipe, but is finished with a bit of cream to cool it first, and then the zinfandel right at the end to ensure the flavor doesn’t boil off.

The caramel is swirled into the ice cream as its packed into the pint. It is a wonderfully rich, manchego ice cream decorated with ribbons of zinfandel caramel.

Like to try some? You can win one of the only two pints in the world, filled with this fabulous, scratch made craft ice cream in our weekly pint giveaway. Enter your name in the comments section here, or on our facebook page under the posted contest. 2 lucky winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 12/27/13 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally and give us feedback. Pints must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!

December 12, 2013

Hazelnut Mocha w/ Whiskey Caramel

Coffee, chocolate and hazelnuts are a familiar pairing in truffles and desserts over the holiday season, and this particular pairing reminded me of the boxes of chocolates my grandparents would give us as kids. With some luck, there was a nice little map to tell you what each piece was and allowed for bypassing the soon to be discarded selections, but often it was just a guessing game. There were the duds like petrified angel food, toothpaste mint or weirdberry liqueurs, the tooth pulling caramels, and then there were the truffles. The truffles were the true prizes, and the hazelnut was always my favorite. It was ultimately this memory that solidified my decision for this week’s flavor, so the object here was to create the my ideal holiday chocolate truffle – in this case with Espresso, Chocolate, Hazelnuts and of course, liquor.

If you know us, by now you know we don’t do anything the easy way. In this particular case it meant a double steep, starting with the hazelnuts.

The hazelnuts are first roasted to deepen their flavor and mellow out the bitterness (as well as remove a majority of their husks) and then ground into a meal to release the fats and allow the maximum surface area of the cream to steep with the flavor of the nut.

For the coffee infusion, we ground our favorite Peace Coffee Espresso blend and used a french press to infuse some of the cream.

Dark, fair trade cocoa was added directly to the base along with the hazelnut meal and coffee during the cooking process, and then steeped longer to draw out as much flavor from the ingredients as possible.

While that was all happening, a quick caramel sauce rolls on the stove and is finished at the very end with a splash of whiskey from none other than our pals at 2 Gingers . Sidenote: If you ever run into me, remind me and I’ll tell you the assuredly hilarious story of how camera straps in the kitchen and boiling sugar on the stove are a dangerous combination.

Once the base has had time to steep, its strained to clear out the hazelnut meal, and allowed to cool in preparation to be spun. The whiskey caramel is layered into the ice cream as its packed into the pint.

No longer do we need a map to find this flavor. Hazelnut Mocha with Whiskey Caramel: an espresso, dark cocoa and roasted hazelnut infused ice cream, decorated with ribbons of rich whiskey caramel.

Want to try it? You can win one of the only two pints in the world, filled with this fabulous, scratch made craft ice cream in our weekly pint giveaway. Enter your name in the comments section here, or on our facebook page under the posted contest. 2 lucky winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 12/13/13 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally and give us feedback. Pints must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!

November 28, 2013

Brown Butter Brickle

While we spend all of this time in search of wild flavor combinations and new avenues to explore – once in awhile we run across a classic that slaps us right in the mouth. I come from a family of passionate ice cream lovers, and when they brought up Butter Brickle I knew it had to be done. It instantly reminded me of my childhood, and after doing some research I found it was pretty true – it is very hard to find the flavor on shelves these days. It wouldn’t be ours if we didn’t put a subtle twist on it, so we incorporated our brown butter brown sugar base and made the toffee bits from scratch.

The key to this ice cream flavor is the toffee bits. They can’t be overly chewy or overly crunchy. Ideally, they should have a “tender crunch” and will begin to almost “melt” into the ice cream once they’ve bathed in it for a few days.

Our toffee process is relatively similar to making caramel, except we use butter along with the sugar and water, and cook it to a “hard crack” to get the right texture. Once the mixture hits approximately 298 degrees, it is removed from heat and spread out onto a lined sheet pan to cool.

Once the toffee has had time to cool completely, it is broken up into small chunks, varying in size so the small ones melt into caramelly pockets and the bigger ones provide the crunch. The “brickle” is stored in the freezer until we’re ready to spin the ice cream.

This is where we put our little signature on the flavor, using our brown sugar, brown butter ice cream base. It all gets tossed into the machine for a spin and..

Voila! A brown sugar, brown butter ice cream, full of delicate scratch made toffee bits. FrozBroz Brown Butter Brickle ice cream, just in time for the holidays.
Want to try it? You can win one of the only two pints in the world, filled with this fabulous, scratch made craft ice cream in our weekly pint giveaway. Enter your name in the comments section here, or on our facebook page under the posted contest. 2 lucky winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 11/29/13 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally and give us feedback. Pints must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!

November 14, 2013

Charred Vanilla Greek Yogurt and Muesli

One of the absolute best things to come out of making all of these ice cream flavors, is meeting local purveyors and farmers and relishing the fruits of their hard work. We are very lucky here in the midwest and we’ve made no secret about the joy it brings us to give these important people all of the credit we can, since our ice cream would be nothing without them. This week we’re featuring two of them, because they both deserve attention for their fantastic products.

Our affinity for breakfast flavors is no secret, so when we got our hands on this Seven Sundays Gourmet Muesli it was a given that we were going to make some ice cream with it. Seven Sundays makes some fantastic muesli and we’ve been enjoying to say the least. Greek yogurt and muesli are best friends, and our charred vanilla has nary an enemy. It was hard to go wrong with this one, and indeed it is a winner.

We first played around with oats in ice cream at the beginning of this year with our Oat w/ Maple Brown sugar and quickly found that the texture the starch from the oats provides the ice cream is really second to none in silkiness. The same principal applies with the “Original” muesli from Seven Sundays- except along with the oats are whole grain barley and rye, along with currants, pepitas, flax seeds, raisins, coconut, banana chips and more.

Greek Yogurt was a shoe in choice for our ice cream base, which isn’t a total yogurt base, but has enough yogurt to give it that signature acidity and keep the creaminess of regular cream as well. What makes this even better, is now you can buy Greek-Style Yogurt from Rochdale farms straight from our home state of Wisconsin. It is nothing short of incredible.

We also use our signature charred vanilla in this flavor to give it that vanilla punch that works so harmoniously with these flavor. The based is completed by a full steep of the muesli which brings out the starches we talked about before and takes on some of the flavors of the rest of the spices and flavors of the muesli. Our job is easy. During the churn we sprinkle some extra muesli into the base to provide a little extra texture to the bite.

And there you have it. A wonderfully silky charred vanilla greek yogurt ice cream speckled from a muesli steep and a sprinkle of muesli at the end.

October 31, 2013

Butternut Maple Cashew

We’ve been on a roll with the veggie flavors, and this is one I’ve been kicking around for some time. Butternut Squash is a fall favorite of mine and we enjoy it in many ways, from soup to roasted to pureed. The trick with Butternut in ice cream was to make sure it’s versatile buttery flavor didn’t get silenced by sweetness or what it was combined with. I chose to use maple sugar as the sweetness and round it out with some salty, maple candied cashews.

To infuse the squash into the cream, it was diced and roasted off, to cook out the moisture content, caramelize the sugars and intensify the flavor. Its a fantastic way to cook the vegetable on its own, and works extremely well in ice cream.

The roasty chunks of squash get pureed in with some cream and then added to our maple sugar ice cream base.

Cashews. Wonderful, cashews. These were candied with more of the maple sugar and a healthy sprinkle of salt. Once candied and cooled, the cashews are added in during the churn to provide a nice salty/sweet crunch.

And there she blows. Butternut Maple Cashew Ice Cream. A wonderfully smooth, roasted butternut squash flavored ice cream with echoes of maple and crunchy maple candied cashews.
Want to try it? You can win one of the only two pints in the world, filled with this fabulous, scratch made craft ice cream in our weekly pint giveaway. Enter your name in the comments section here, or on our facebook page under the posted contest. 2 lucky winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 11/1/13 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally and give us feedback. Pints must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!