benny – Page 12

October 17, 2013

Apple Peanut Butter

I often think of the impact of this venture has on our kids. My son is an extremely picky eater, but he’s eaten things that he would never dream of even considering were it not translated to him in the form of ice cream. Our boys are around ice cream all of the time, have access to it far more than I ever did, and are developing preferences in flavor that is a little mind boggling. Pretty cool.

On the other hand, they tend to have an equal impact on what we do. Obviously having children means the thought of the nutrition (or lack thereof) in ice cream is always on our minds, which is why we preach moderation, small portions, exceptional quality and big flavors. They also help us remember what is was like to be a kid ourselves, and some of the foods that we might have forgotten. Enter, Apples and Peanut Butter.

Another apple flavor wasn’t in the plans for this fall, but in my quest to get my son a healthy snack – apples and peanut butter came into the fray. Almost instantly he and my wife turned to me and said – “this should be an ice cream flavor”. They were right. Shall we?

For this flavor, I chose to bypass whole apples, in favor of Apple Cider. I’ve already hinted at my fandom of Hoch’s apples, and their cider is coming from high quality apples which means it’s hard to go wrong.

The challenge of this particular ice cream flavor was making an apple flavored ice cream without fruit in it. To accomplish that goal, cider was reduced with sugar to provide both the tart apple flavor and the sugar source for the cream base.

I chose a fantastic natural peanut butter to swirl into the cream, but it was too oily and thick to go into the ice cream base on its own. The peanut butter was combined with cream and a little bit of sugar to thin it out a bit and make a peanut butter sauce to be swirled into the cream base.

Pretty straightforward really, but bursting with flavor. Tart apple ice cream swirled with ribbons of salty natural peanut butter. Evoking the very snack we all knew and loved as kids – and probably as adults too.

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 10/18/13 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!

October 3, 2013

Red Hot Candied Apple

Its apple season, and as we rifle through our apple recipe list it becomes a bigger challenge every year to create new apple flavors. Especially considering we love love love some of our old ones. This year it was time to tackle the candied apple.

The classic cinnamon candy flavor on a candied apple – one you might also know from red hots candy or sticks of gum is Ceylon cinnamon, which is not the cinnamon most of us are used to eating in baked goods and desserts. That would be Cassia. Some call Ceylon “true cinnamon” even though its probably usurped by Cassia in usage. It’s easy to confuse the two, but their flavors could not be more different. In order to make sure this flavor accurately and truly represents that cinnamon candy flavor, we utilized Ceylon in several forms. You cannot discern the two by looking at them, but I’m going to include a picture of Ceylon cinnamon anyway. 🙂

First, the apples. We chose these beauties from Hoch orchard, diced them up, tossed them with brown sugar, butter and powdered Ceylon, and roasted them in the oven to concentrate their flavor and squeeze out the water (as we do). Then they were tossed with a little cane sugar at the end to provide a slight crunch. Parents, if you are looking for a healthy, and easy snack/almost candy/dessert for your kids (or yourself) – just these roasted apples will do the trick. But I digress, back to making ice cream.

Next, the syrup. We made our basic cinnamon syrup, but using Ceylon cinnamon instead of Cassia. For fun and for some color, I dissolved some red hots into the mix. You know, to make it legit.

The cream is made with our regular cane sugar base and infused with more ceylon cinnamon powder. The roasted apples are tossed in at the end of the churn, and the syrup is layered in as the ice cream is packed into the pint. The result is an ice cream laced with levels of ceylon cinnamon invoking that “red hot” flavor, and tart roasty chunks of apple speckled throughout each bite.

There you have it – Red Hot Candied Apple alongside our red hot new labels!

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 10/4/13 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!

September 19, 2013

Mint Chocolate Chip with Yellow Watermelon Swirl

This was a flavor I toiled over for months. It wasn’t supposed to be a mint chocolate chip ice cream. It was supposed to be a watermelon ice cream. I spent most of my time with this concept, trying to figure out and decide on how I wanted to do a watermelon ice cream. Then, when it finally came time to execute, I cut open the watermelon only to find out I had purchased the yellow variety. Now, that isn’t necessarily a deal breaker – yellow watermelon is incredible. But for a first watermelon excursion, it just seemed like it had to be red – that’s what everyone thinks of at first blush. So it was time to improvise. I had planned on using mint in my watermelon flavor, and after some deliberation with my frozen brother I ended up in left field. No surprise. My watermelon ice cream turned into our twist on mint chocolate chip. Not only did it work splendidly, but as fate would have it, I seemed to have ended up where I should have.

First the watermelon syrup. First they are taken apart and seeded. Then pureed and reduced over heat with sugar into a beautiful golden syrup.

The mint is pureed with some cream and then mixed into our standard ice cream base.

We found these fantastic fair trade chocolate chips at our favorite co-op and threw them in at the end of the churn – they add a good hearty crunch and chocolate punch.

The watermelon syrup is swirled in as the ice cream is packed into the pints, and the end result is pretty awesome.

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 9/20/13 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!

September 5, 2013

Cream Cheese Red Pepper Slivered Almond

Red Peppers are another one of those summer veggies that are deceivingly sweet, especially when they are fresh out of the dirt. I’ve been obsessing about ice cream flavors involving red peppers every summer, but its taken nearly 2 years for me to get to it on the list. Once I finally decided the time had arrived, then I had to decide what and how. I’d contemplated a full red pepper infused ice cream. A romesco inspired flavor was another conceptual flavor. Yet another was a Pimiento cheese which red pepper is a star of. We will likely come back to all fo these in time. In the end, I decided on a variation that curved away from all of those, utilizing the pepper as a sweet jelly and combining it with cream cheese. If you’ve ever had cream cheese covered in red pepper jelly, you know where I’m headed.

The first step was to roast the peppers to concentrate the sugars and get the skins off.

Once clean, the roasted peppers were pureed up coarsely, combined with our good friend sugar, some lemon juice and simmered down to a sweet jelly like consistency.

For an added crunch, I chose to go with blanched, slivered almonds to provide a contrast in texture without overwhelming in flavor.

Went with our cream cheese base, sprinkled in the slivered almonds during the churn and layered in the sweet red pepper jelly as it went into the pint.

And there you have it. End of summer heaven – lucious cream cheese ice cream, studded with crunchy slivered almonds and rippled with red pepper jelly.

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 9/5/13 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!

August 22, 2013

Roasted Carrot

We’re hitting our end and we’ll continue with everyone’s favorite orange root. Carrots. Harvest time carrots are the best, and there’s no other time to get that carrot-y flavor out than now. This has been one we’ve wanted to do for years, and we finally got to it on our list.

These babies are gorgeous, and I can’t get enough of them during this time of the year. We grill them, eat them raw, slice, shredded..but nothing is better than roasted in the oven. The sweetness that comes out of the carrot during this process is incredible, and was the inspiration for this flavor.

So that’s what we did. We roasted them in the oven in butter until they got all caramelly.

Then they went for a spin in the food processor, and we’re mixed into our brown sugar base. The brown sugar brings the brown butter and the roasted carrot flavor out even more.

And this is our reward – an extremely rich and creamy, roasted carrot ice cream that sings with a deep roasted caramel flavor and ends with a nice carrot kick.

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 8/23/13 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!