Erik – Page 3 – FROZBROZ

June 7, 2015

Rhubarb Bar Lemon Thyme

We’re back on rhubarb this week – ’tis the season in Minnesota, and we’ve got to get our fill. This week, we’re riffing off of an old favorite of ours; Rosemary Lemon Bar. Instead of the rosemary infused ice cream, we’re doing a lemon thyme infusion, and making chewy shortbread rhubarb bars instead of lemon bars. It’s a win win guys! Let’s get started with this week’s flavor – Rhubarb Bar Lemon Thyme

As I mentioned, this is a riff off of our lemon bar ice cream, and the lemon bars…they’re my mother’s sacred recipe, they are oh soooooo good. The idea is to make a bar that stacks up to the buttery chewiness of the lemon bar, but with rhubarb instead. Also, the rhubarb compote we are using for these bars is a riff off of Serious Jams rhubarb. Her jam is incredible, and honestly, people should be fighting for jars from any one of her small batches. She is a master preservationist who takes the time to hand craft jars of joy.

For the bars, we make a shortbread crust with flour, sugar and butter. The crust is pressed into a pan and baked. The rhubarb compote with its syrup is mixed with eggs and flour, and then poured over the hot crust and baked longer. I think we accomplished our goal here. We did in fact. Buttery, chewy, and slightly tart, rhubarb bars. They get chopped up and added into the ice cream at the end of the churn.

For the ice cream base, we’re going to infuse it using finely grated lemon zest, and fresh thyme. We went with our standard cane sugar base for this one. The lemon zest and thyme are cooked with base as it pasteurizes, and after a brief steep, the lemon zest and thyme are strained out. The base is cooled and is ready for the churn.

The end result is everything we could have hoped for. A rich lemon thyme infused ice cream with chunkers of tart chewy rhubarb bars. It’s hard to get your fill of this one.

Rhubarb Bar Lemon Thyme

Shortbread Crust:
1 cup Butter
2 cups Flour, AP
1/2 cup Cane sugar

Filling:
4 Eggs
4 Tablespoons Flour
1 Tablespoon Lemon juice
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 1/3 Rhubarb compote with syrup(Recipe Here)

Ice Cream Base:
2 cups Heavy Cream
1 cup Milk
3/4 cup Cane Sugar
2 Eggs
10 Thyme sprigs
1 teaspoons sea salt
Zest, fine, 1 lemon

Instructions:

1. Shortbread Crust: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a food processor, pulse butter, flour and sugar. Press into 13″ x 9″ cake pan. Bake for 15 minutes.

2. Make Filling: In a bowl, whisk eggs, flour, lemon juice, salt and baking powder. Stir in rhubarb compote with syrup.

3. Finish Rhubarb Bars: When shortbread crust comes out of the oven, pour filling over the top and bake for 25-30 more minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool. Chop 1 cup of rhubarb bars and freeze. Reserve for ice cream. Chow down on remaining rhubarb bars.

4. Make ice cream base: Crack eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk fully. Add cane sugar and whisk. Add heavy cream, milk, salt, and lemon zest. Whisk until ingredients are combined. Add thyme sprigs.

3. Cook/pasteurize ice cream base: Over medium heat, whisk or stir base continuously. Keep stirring continuously until temperature reaches 165-170 degrees. Remove from heat. Using a fine mesh sieve, strain base into a clean bowl. Cool ice cream base to room temperature (an ice bath will do this in about 15-20 minutes). Put base in a clean container, cover, and chill in refrigerator overnight.

4. Churn ice cream base in ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions. Add 1 cup of chopped rhubarb bars to ice cream at the end of the churn. Store ice cream in air tight container in freezer until chow time.

*Yields approximately 2.5 pints

If you’d rather not make it, you can be one of two lucky winners of 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. Two winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 6/19/15 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally in Minneapolis. Prizes must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!

June 3, 2015

Cointreau Cardamom Rhubarb Compote

Here we go y’all…this is the official start to the growing/harvest season in Minnesota, and for us, that means more locally produced ingredients in every flavor we make. It’s like a sigh of relief that we’ve made it through the winter months. We can now let the Minnesota harvest guide us through the summer and fall months…a tour a la mode. And what better way to start off the season than with a favorite; Rhubarb. We’re going to spice this one up, as well as unlock some knowledge from the brilliant preservationist and jam maker, Heidi Skoog of Serious Jam. So let’s get started with this flavor – Cointrea Cardamom Rhubarb Compote.

For ice cream base, I wanted to pair the rhubarb with some subtle and complementary flavors. It’s not a secret that oranges pair well with rhubarb, but I was looking for trace amounts, so I decided to use Cointreau, an orange flavored liqueur. I added a small amount of Cointreau to the base as if I were using vanilla extract. My second base component is cardamom. It just made sense to me. Have you ever had a cardamom Christmas cookie with a jam/jelly glaze on top? Mmmmmmm. The combo works, trust me. Cardamom grows in a seed pod. To use, the seeds are removed from the pods and ground with either a spice grinder or mortar and pestle. Cardamom is not a subtle spice, so for the ice cream base, I went light with it, as I wanted the rhubarb compote to take the show. The ice cream base is pasteurized using organic cane sugar, cooled and is ready for the churn. But first, our rhubarb compote…

This is heirloom rhubarb from my garden. We use it every year, and it’s from a plant that was split off of my father-in-law’s parent’s farm near Milwaukee Wisconsin. For the ice cream, I wanted to make a rhubarb compote to swirl in. I wanted the kind of rhubarb that our good friend Heidi Skoog feed to us a year or two back. I would consider it a compote, since the fruit ends up whole in a syrup. I had never had rhubarb in this way before, and it blew my mind. Heidi has explained her process to me many times, but of course I couldn’t remember exact amounts. Instead of calling for the recipe, I decided to go with what I could remember. To my surprise, I ended up with a pretty damn good product. I still like Heidi’s version better, but for the ice cream, this worked out great.

As I remember it, the rhubarb got chopped very small. In a crock, or in my case, a stainless steel bowl, cane sugar and lemon juice are added. The lemon juice and sugar draw all of the water content out of the rhubarb as it macerates. The rhubarb goes into the refrigerator for two days until all of the sugar fully dissolves (I would take out and stir once or twice a day). After full maceration, the sugary rhubarb liquid is strained into a sauce pan where it is boiled into a syrup. The hot syrup is poured over the top of the strained/macerated rhubarb. That’s it! It’s a simple, yet very laborious and time consuming process that turns rhubarb into a compote that anyone would love. Unless you’re crazy. Then you wouldn’t like it. But you’d be crazy. The cooled compote is swirled into the Cointreau cardamom ice cream at the end of the churn.

Result? silky Cointreau and cardamom infused ice cream with a tart toothsome rhubarb compote. A great way to start off the growing season here in Minnesota!

Cointreau Cardamom Rhubarb Compote

5 Cups Rhubarb, 1/4″ dice (approx. 10-15 stalks)
2 1/2 cups Cane Sugar
1 Lemon, juiced, seeds removed

2 cups Heavy Cream
1 cup Milk
1/2 cup Cane Sugar
2 Eggs
2 teaspoons Cointreau
3/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 tsp Cardamom, freshly ground

Instructions:

1. Rhubarb Compote (makes enough for the ice cream and extra to eat!): Clean Rhubarb, and chop into 1/4 inch dice. Place rhubarb in a bowl, preferably a ceramic crock. Add the 2 1/2 cups sugar and juice of one lemon. Cover and macerate in refrigerator for two days, stirring occasionally. All sugar should be dissolved before proceeding. Strain liquid into a sauce pan and reserve rhubarb and spoon it into a one quart jar fitted with lid. Over high heat, reduce the liquid until a candy thermometer reads 220 degrees. Remove liquid from heat, and pour hot liquid over reserved rhubarb in one quart jar. Allow to cool, cover, and place in refrigerator until ready to use.

2. Make ice cream base: Crack eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk fully. Add cane sugar and whisk. Add heavy cream, milk, Cointreau, salt and ground cardamom. Whisk until ingredients are combined.

3. Cook/pasteurize ice cream base: Over medium heat, whisk or stir base continuously. Keep stirring continuously until temperature reaches 165-170 degrees. Remove from heat. Pour into a clean bowl. Cool ice cream base to room temperature (an ice bath will do this in about 15-20 minutes). Put base in a clean container, cover, and chill in refrigerator overnight.

4. Churn ice cream base in ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions. Add 1/3 – 1/2 cup of rhubarb compote to ice cream at the end of the churn. Store ice cream in air tight container in freezer until chow time.

*Yields approximately 2.5 pints

If you’d rather not make it, you can be one of two lucky winners of 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. Two winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 6/5/15 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally in Minneapolis. Prizes must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!

May 21, 2015

Peanut Butter and Bacon

Have you ever had a burger with peanut butter and bacon? I hadn’t until recently, and it was shockingly delicious. So shocking delicious that I thought it would make for a shockingly delicious ice cream. Turns out, it is! Let’s get started with this week’s flavor – Peanut Butter and Bacon.

Organic peanut butter. Creamy organic peanut butter. Very creamy organic peanut butter. It’s all of those things, and it is what we are using to make our peanut butter base. For this flavor, I decided to use a brown sugar base to add more depth and caramel tones. The peanut butter is added to the base and pasteurized by cooking to 165 degrees F. Just like adding regular butter to our ice cream, the added fat from the peanut butter tends to separate. If not emulsified, the ice cream will leave a film on your mouth and on the utensil you use to eat it. To emulsify, the ice cream base gets run through a blender on high speed. After an ice bath cool down, the ice cream is ready to churn.

Not before preparing our bacon though. Not just bacon. Candied bacon. I chose to candied the bacon, for one, because after all, it is going into ice cream. Secondly, I want to get a relatively hard layer on the outside of the meats, so the ice cream doesn’t soften it over time, making it chewy and unpalatable. FYI, nitrate free bacon here. Thick cut deliciousness. The bacon is given a rub down with brown sugar. In to the oven until caramelized. I like to cool my bacon on a wire rack to achieve a full crunch factor. Once cooled, the bacon is chopped up and is ready to toss into the peanut butter ice cream at the end of the churn.

The finished product results in an intensely creamy peanut butter ice cream with sweet and salty bits of candied bacon. It’s shockingly delicious!

Peanut Butter and Bacon

1 # Bacon, thick cut
1/3 cup Brown Sugar

2 cups Heavy Cream
1 cup Milk
1/2 cup Brown Sugar
1/2 cup Peanut Butter, creamy
2 Eggs
1 1/8 teaspoons Sea Salt

Instructions:

1. Candied Bacon(makes enough for the ice cream and extra to eat!): Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Line a sheet pan with foil. In a bowl, toss the bacon with 1/3 cup brown sugar until evenly coated. Lay bacon on sheet pan in a single layer. Bake in oven for 30-40 minutes until crisp. Check bacon periodically after 25 minutes to make sure it doesn’t burn. Remove from oven, and move bacon slices to wire rack to cool. Once cool, freeze bacon, and then chop frozen bacon into 1/4 inch bits.

2. Make ice cream base: Crack eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk fully. Add brown sugar and whisk. Add heavy cream, milk, peanut butter and salt. Whisk until ingredients are combined. Peanut butter will break up and incorporate as the base is heated in step 3.

3. Cook/pasteurize ice cream base: Over medium heat, whisk or stir base continuously. Keep stirring continuously until temperature reaches 165-170 degrees. Remove from heat and place half of the base in a blender (***DANGER! BE CAREFUL BLENDING HOT LIQUIDS***). Blend on high for 20 seconds. Pour into a clean bowl. Repeat blending process with remaining ice cream base. Cool blended ice cream base to room temperature (an ice bath will do this in about 15-20 minutes). Put base in a clean container, cover, and chill in refrigerator overnight.

4. Churn ice cream base in ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions. Add 1/3 cup of candied bacon to ice cream at the end of the churn. Store ice cream in air tight container in freezer until chow time.

*Yields approximately 2.5 pints

If you’d rather not make it, you can be one of two lucky winners of 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. Two winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 5/22/15 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally in Minneapolis. Prizes must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!

May 4, 2015

Malted Banana – Vegan

A few years back, we had a flavor request from a woman whose family had owned a diner in Richfield, MN many years ago. She reminisced about her favorite malt there, malted banana. So this week, malted banana makes it’s come back, except we’re going to give it a little twist. We’re going dairy free with this one. It’s been a while, and the thought of a malted banana ice cream wrapped up in a coconut milk base seemed too hard to pass up. So we give you this week’s flavor; Vegan Malted Banana

First, our malted vegan coconut milk base. For the malt, we use a dark malted barley powder that we picked up at our local home brew store. It gets blended with cane sugar, a touch of vanilla, and the Aroy-D coconut milk that we purchased at the best Asian market in the North, United Noodles! The Aroy-D has a nice clean coconut milk flavor with the proper fat content to make a rich vegan ice cream. For our coconut bases, we blend in a pinch of xanthan gum to help emulsify the fat molecules that often separate in coconut milk.

For the bananas, we’re using ripe organic bananas that we slice into 1/2 inch discs. They’re laid out on a sheet pan lined with a silpat and roasted in the oven for about 25 minutes. The roasting decreases water content and condenses flavor. We’re always trying to decrease water content of ingredient add-ins, as they can give the ice cream an unwanted icy texture. That’s a FrozBroz no no. After roasting, the bananas are pureed in a blender with some of the malted coconut base. The entire malted banana ice cream base is heated to 165 degrees, cooled, and is ready to churn.

The result is a rich vegan malted banana ice cream, that we hope, will someday peak nostalgia in one of our ice cream fans. Cheers Wendy!

Malted Banana – Vegan

2 Ripe Organic Bananas
2 14oz. cans coconut milk(preferably Aroy-D)
3/4 Cup Organic Cane Sugar
2 Tablespoons Dark Malt Powder(can be found at your local home brew shop)
3/4 teaspoon Sea Salt
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon xanthan gum

Instructions:

1. Roast Bananas: Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Cut bananas into 1/2 inch discs and place on sheet pan lined with a silicone baking mat or parchment paper. Roast for 20-25 minutes until lightly browned.

2. Empty 2 cans of coconut milk into a blender. Add roasted bananas. Before blending, mix xanthan gum, malt powder and salt together in a bowl. With blender running on high, puree bananas in coconut milk and add powder mix. Once fully blended, pour mix into medium sauce pan. Add sugar and vanilla extract to base.

3. Cook/pasteurize ice cream base: Heat base, stirring occasionally, until temperature reaches 165-170 degrees. Remove from heat and cool to room temperature (an ice bath will do this in about 15-20 minutes). Put base in a clean container, cover, and chill in refrigerator overnight.

4. Churn ice cream base in ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions. Store ice cream in air tight container in freezer until chow time.

*Yields approximately 2.5 pints

If you’d rather not make it, you can be one of two lucky winners of 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. Two winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 5/8/15 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally in Minneapolis. Prizes must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!

April 22, 2015

Black Lager with Candied Pretzels

If you follow our weekly explorations, you know that a few weeks back we cranked out a flavor derived from the classic beer cheese soup. Working with beer in ice cream has been pretty enjoyable, so I decided to tackle another classic combination involving beer; beer and pretzels. Not just beer though. And not just pretzels. We bring you this week’s flavor – Black Lager with Candied Pretzels.

About a month ago, we were asked to make a New Belgium 1554 Black Lager ice cream for a beer and food pairing event sponsored by New Belgium Brewing. It turned out so well, that it just made sense to pair with the candied pretzels for this week’s flavor. Although not a local brew, the 1554’s dark malty caramel quality works extremely well in ice cream. For the ice cream, the beer gets reduced to nearly nothing. By the end of the reduction, a 12 ounce beer becomes about a tablespoon of syrup. After doing a side by side taste test using cane sugar in one base and brown sugar in the other, the 1554 with brown sugar crushed. Not surprising, the brown sugar helps accentuate the deep caramel notes in the beer. The beer reduction is added to our brown sugar ice cream base, and after cooking, is cooled, and then ready to churn.

Next, candied pretzels. BTW, candied pretzels…they’re the shizz. To make our candied pretzels we modified the “Pretzel Crunch” recipe from the great pastry chef, Christina Tosi, of Momofuku Milk Bar fame in NYC. With the pretzels, her recipe calls for malt powder, brown sugar, and butter. With the black lager ice cream, the flavors couldn’t be jive’n any better than that. The pretzels get crushed, and all ingredients are mixed together. Our version is going to get baked about twice as long as the original to achieve ultimate crunchy candied pretzel status. Either way you have it, these crunchers are worth their weight in gold. They’re broken up and added into the Black Lager ice cream at the end of the churn.

It’s a classic combination that meets present day ice cream. And by present day, I mean future. Rich caramelly black lager ice cream with crunchers of malty candied pretzels. It’s beer and pretzels at their best.

Black Lager with Candied Pretzels

2 12oz. Beers – New Belgium Black Lager
2 Cups Heavy Cream
1 Cup Whole Milk
3/4 Cup Light Brown Sugar
2 Large Eggs
1 teaspoon Sea Salt

1 cup pretzels, crushed into 1/4-1/2 inch pieces
4 Tablespoon Butter, Melted
3 Tablespoon Light Brown Sugar
2 Tablespoom Milk Powder
1 Tablespoon Cane Sugar
1 teaspoon Malt Powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

Instructions:

1. Beer Reduction: In a stock pot, add the beer and bring to a boil. Stirring occasionally, keep your eye on reduction until foam has died down. You may need to lower the heat occasionally to avoid boil over. Once foam has died down, beer can be reduced on high until beer is nearly gone and approximately 2-4 Tablespoons of syrup remain. Remove from heat and set aside until ice cream base ready.

2. Make ice cream base: Crack eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk fully. Add brown sugar and whisk. Add heavy cream, milk, and salt. Whisk until ingredients are combined. Pour into stock pot with beer reduction.

3. Cook/pasteurize ice cream base: Over medium heat, whisk or stir base continuously. Keep stirring continuously until temperature reaches 165-170 degrees. Remove from heat and cool to room temperature (an ice bath will do this in about 15-20 minutes). Put base in a clean container, cover, and chill in refrigerator overnight.

4. Prepare Candied Pretzels: Preheat oven to 275 degrees and line a baking sheet with silpat or parchment paper. Break up pretzels into small pieces and toss with other dry ingredients. Add melted butter. Toss until combined and spread out onto lined baking sheet. Bake for 30-40 minutes until dark golden brown. Remove from oven and allow to cool on baking sheet. Break up candied pretzel’s and freeze in airtight container until needed.

5. Churn ice cream base in ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions. Add 1/2-1 cup of candied pretzels to black lager ice cream at the end of the churn. Store ice cream in air tight container in freezer until chow time.

*Yields approximately 2.5 pints

If you’d rather not make it, you can be one of two lucky winners of 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. Two winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 4/24/15 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally in Minneapolis. Prizes must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!