Flavors – Page 41

January 19, 2012

Green Tea with Orange Shortbread Bars

Winter in Minnesota this year has brought us milder than usual temperatures, but this week is a different story. Winter is finally showing face and with the temperatures falling, what better way to celebrate than with some FrozBroz ice cream. This cold weather got us thinking about hot beverages, and in particular, hot tea. With all of the herbal teas out there, we decided to start with a classic in the ice cream world, and add a little orange twist.

This is Matcha Green Tea from the Tea Source in St. Paul. They provide the Twin Cities with the highest quality teas from around the world. Matcha is a Japanese ceremonial tea which has very complex vegetal qualities to it, which in our minds makes it great for ice cream.

The leaves of Matcha are ground into a silky powder.

We steep this Matcha powder in hot cream, and although we can not be sure, we believe that most other ice cream makers making green tea ice cream skip this step. Instead they incorporate the powder directly into the base. Remember those complex vegetal notes? Steeping brings those out BIG TIME!

And here’s the orange twist! Citrus is in season, so we decided to rock these orange shortbread bars, made with butter, flour, sugar, orange and orange zest. They offer a great balance to the herbalness of the tea ice cream. The acidity of these bars cuts right through.

Come celebrate Winter with us and have a little Green Tea with Orange Shortbread Bars.

How about a free pint? 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 (1/20/2012) at 4pm and will announce them on our facebook page. 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!

January 12, 2012

Cardamom Basmati Pistachio

Sometimes the path to finding a successful new flavor hits several dead ends before we find the way. Often, we’re on a path such as this because we are trying to replicate the flavor of something in ice cream, and that flavor has components that don’t work exactly right when their medium is changed.

In this case, the inspiration for the flavor came from the Indian rice pudding known as Kheer, and if you’ve ever been to an Indian restaurant, you’ve probably tried it. It seems so simple and pure, but the subtle flavors in it can be deep and complex – and any one of them can easily overwhelm the other. Finding the balance can be tricky.

The ever so slightly nutty flavor of the Basmati is hugely important to get the dessert to taste right, but it has no place in ice cream. In my first attempt at this, I thought perhaps the cooked and saturated rice would be o.k. in it’s frozen state. And while it wasn’t offensive, it just wasn’t right.

The trick in this case, was to steep the base with the basmati, long enough to infuse it with the flavor of the rice, without it being a component in the final product.

To achieve the flavor we wanted, the cream and rice go through a two stage steeping process over the course of 48 hours.

Interestingly enough, we also found out that too much Cardamom (which isn’t much at all) overwhelms everything and makes the cream taste like Fruit Loops. It was thoroughly confusing, and somewhat amusing. But totally wrong.

The best outcome of flavor included using a very small amount of Cardamom, and a tiny bit of Saffron. Or maybe just enough to make for a better picture than powdered Cardamom.

The highlight this cream is the pistachios, perhaps my favorite ice cream ingredient of all. In traditional Indian Kheer, pistachios are typically a garnish, mostly an afterthought.

An afterthought? Hardly.

The Pistachios are shelled and crushed into small pieces, and perforate the spice and cream in salty bliss.

‘Stachio.

The flavors come together to be very representative of Kheer, but steer the outcome in a direction that favors ice cream just a bit better. We’ve learned over the years that subtle flavors disappear in ice cream too easily, particularly because cold temperatures dull your ability to taste. Finding a way to intensify subtlety is totally ironic, and feels kind of misguided….. but it can pay off in spades. And it sure is fun.

How about a free pint? 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 (1/13/2012) at 4pm and will announce them on our facebook page. 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!

January 5, 2012

Grasshopper Chocolate Chunk

The holidays have passed, and so we move on to a new year filled with more lost promises of better eating. Well, maybe they’re not lost. Who ever said you needed to pound 15 Christmas cookies a day for 2 weeks straight? It’s just time to regulate our intake.

For most of us, there are still a ton of leftovers, and with leftovers, there are the great memories of last year. One of those great memories at our family’s house is grasshopper ice cream, and unless my brother overstayed his welcome, there will likely be a few more scoops left in the freeze.

So lets do it…FrozBroz style – Grasshopper Chocolate Chunk

What is grasshopper? As a cocktail, it is a mix of Creme de Menthe, Creme de Cacao and fresh cream shaken up on the rocks and then strained into a glass. So we’re pretty much making a cocktail ice cream. Bye bye new years resolution number 3.

This is Creme de Menthe. It is what makes a grasshopper a grasshopper…and green. It traditionally gets it’s color from the mint leaves used to flavor the liqueur. It will clean your sinuses and warm your heart. Along with the chocolate liqueur/Creme de Cacao, we add them both to our vanilla base at the end of churning.

Meet Theo. Theo is the only Organic Fair Trade Chocolate maker in the US. We love organic and we love Fair Trade. This 70% cacao bar is rich with deep chocolate flavor. It gets broken into chunks and added in with the liqueurs at the end of the churn.

Just another lost promise to keep the memories alive. Grasshopper Chocolate Chunk.

Like to win a free pint? Per the weekly drill, 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 (1/6/2012) at 4pm and will announce them on our facebook page. 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!

December 29, 2011

Sour Cream Christmas Cookie

‘Tis the season of forming a solid leftover strategy. Turkey, mashed potatoes, pie, veggies, breads, desserts – you name it, and its probably stacked in a container somewhere in your fridge. Some find the form of a hotdish, others make for perfect sandwich toppings. No matter what, if you’re going to make the best of it, creativity is key.

So as it happens, this flavor just fell into our laps. These “cutout” Christmas cookies have been a staple in my family for ages. We’ve had them every year as far back as I can remember.

But they don’t end at Christmas. Once the holidays are over the cookies go on…and on. Since my Mom makes enough of these delicious cooks to feed a few families for several months, we thought we’d take some off her hands and put them to good use.

Now, this isn’t a super challenging flavor by any stretch of the imagination. But we did need to figure out a way to cut the extra sweetness of the already iced cookies in the sweet cream. So to counter it, we chose to use our sour cream base to provide a nice subtle hint of acidity to balance the extra sugar.

For the big finish, the cookies are crumbled into the base at the end. Its the holiday FrozBroz interpretation of Cookies and Cream.

And that’s that. Sometimes simplicity rules, and in this case its hard to lose.

Like to win a free pint? Per the weekly drill, 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 (12/30/2011) at 4pm and will announce them on our facebook page. 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!

December 22, 2011

Sandbakkel with Grape Muscado Pink Peppercorn Jam

Sandbakkels are one of those Christmas cookie traditions that really embody my memory of the holidays growing up. Tables lined every wall in my grandmothers three season porch where boxes were filled with sugar cookies, spritz, rosettes, sandbakkels, krumkake and lefse among others. They are fundamentally made with the same ingredients, but the sandbakkels, after sitting in the cold air, had a substantial buttery crunch like none of the others. It is this and the reminiscence of our grandmothers cookies that bring us to another FrozBroz holiday flavor. Making sandbakkels requires some grandmotherly love.

That’s why we are going to get things started with Lard! These cookies wouldn’t be what they are without it. Cows make butter and pigs make lard. Fortunately for all of us, this recipe has BOTH. The lard gets creamed with butter, sugar, eggs, flour and vanilla.

There are a few spices that can really distinguish one holiday cookie from another. Nutmeg, cinnamon and allspice come to mind. Here we use Cardamom. These pods are cracked open and the seeds are ground in a spice grinder, then added to the dough.

Ok, for those of you who are unfamiliar with Sandbakkels, these are the molds that they are baked in. I mean, come on, these cookies are so cool that they require a special tin for each individual cookie.

The dough gets pressed into tins with one of the broz big chub thumbs, then baked off until golden brown.

Sandbakkels! These get tossed into a vanilla base with a little brown butter at the end of the churn. Now this flavor would be great on it’s own, but we just had to jam a little more holiday cheer into this one.

Our friend Heidi Skoog over at Serious Jam is cooking up small batches of jams and jellies like Strawberry Balsamic with Black Pepper, Blueberry Bourbon Sage and Raspberry Ruhbarb Pimms. For this weeks flavor, she made us a Grape Muscado Pink Peppercorn Jam that we drizzled in layers while packaging. This jam offers a gentle twist when paired with grandmothers Sandbakkels.

Not to mention, Serious Jam looks seriously awesome in our ice cream!

How about a free pint? Per the weekly drill, 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 (12/23/2011) at 4pm and will announce them on our facebook page. 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!