Buttered Toast and Honey

As a kid, I would occasionally eat heavily buttered toast with honey drizzled over the top. It was usually a breakfast thingy, but I know I enjoyed a few buttered honey toasts for an after school snack session. It was one of those things that always tasted better with white bread too. It’s been awhile since I’ve had this toast, but my food nostalgia always beckons the question, would it make a worthy ice cream flavor? The answer is usually yes, and in this case…YES! This week’s flavor – Buttered Toast and Honey

 

 

ButterBrown Butter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I remember having a rather large portion of butter on this toast, something more like a light frosting that melted away into the bread. For the ice cream, I wanted to use brown butter to highlight the flavor of the butter, but also to accentuate it’s nuttiness that resembles the flavor of the toasted bread. The brown butter gets emulsified into our organic cane sugar ice cream base.

 

 

 

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For the toasts, I’m using french bread: sliced, toasted, and then scraped, with the back of a knife, into the ice cream base. The toast crumbs steep in the base during pasteurization, and are then strained out with a fine mesh strainer. The base is cooled and is ready to churn.

 

 

 

Honey - The Beez Kneez

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lastly, honey to round out the mission. Minnesota honey! The Beez Kneez honey! Do we need to say more? If you’ve never heard of The Beez Kneez, just click here to learn more about their wonderful honey. It’s swirled straight into the ice cream after the churn.

 

 

 

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Buttered Toast and Honey ice cream…just like being a kid again.

 

 

 

 

 

Buttered Toast and Honey

2 cups Heavy Cream
1 cup Milk
3/4 cup cane sugar
2 Eggs
2-3 slices French Bread
2 Tablespoons Butter
1 teaspoon Sea salt

1/4 cup Honey

 

Instructions:

1. Prepare the brown butter: Place the butter in a saute pan and bring to a boil over high heat. Continue over high heat until butter begins to brown. Remove from heat and reserve brown butter. If browning gets away from you and starts to look too dark, pour into a glass bowl immediately to stop the browning process.

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

4. Cook/pasteurize ice cream base: Over medium heat, whisk or stir base continuously until temperature reaches 110-120 degrees. Remove from heat. Take one cup of the warmed ice cream base out and place in blender. With blender running, slowly add the brown butter until emulsified. Pour emulsified mixture back into sauce pan with ice cream base.

Toast French bread – medium to dark toasting. Using a butter knife, scrape the toast over the ice cream base, so that all of the toasted crumbs fall off into base. Resume whisking or stirring base continuously over medium heat until temperature reaches 165-170 degrees. Remove from heat, and allow to steep for 10 minutes. Strain base through a fine mesh strainer. Cool ice cream base to room temperature (an ice bath will do this in about 15-20 minutes). Cover base, and chill in refrigerator overnight.

5. Churn ice cream base in ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions. Swirl in honey during packaging. 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 10/23/15 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!

 

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Roasted Yellow Pepper Saffron and Honey

Staying inspired by the harvest that continues to roll in, for this week’s flavor, I’m using components from a sauce I used to make. A sauce consisting of roasted yellow pepper, saffron, honey, garlic, dijon mustard, and rice vinegar. It is an excellent accompaniment to grilled salmon and always best when red and yellow peppers are in season.  I clearly needed to revise my ingredient list if I was going to convert this thing into an ice cream, so for the ice cream, roasted pepper, saffron and honey made the most sense to me. And hey, it worked! Let’s get it started…this week’s flavor – Roasted Yellow Pepper Saffron and Honey.

 

 

Bell PeppersRoasted PeppersRoasted Peppers

 

 

 

 

First, roasting the peppers, which starts with these gorgeous ones from the Midtown Farmers Market in Minneapolis. I like to roast my peppers over an open flame, if possible. It’s quick, and gives the peppers a nice char. Once the peppers are charred all the way around, I wrap them tight in plastic wrap and allow them to sweat for a few minutes. The sweating process loosens all that charred skin, and makes it simple to scrap off. Now that we have our roasted peppers, it’s time to make them usable in our ice cream.

 

 

 

Roasted Yellow Pepper PureeRoasted Yellow PepperRoasted Yellow PepperRoasted Yellow Pepper ReductionRoasted Yellow Pepper PasteRoasted Yellow Pepper Paste

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As with all of our flavors, we strive for an ice cream that never turns out icy, which can be challenging when working with fresh fruits and vegetables. Naturally, they all have a lot of moisture, so to reduce the moisture content, our first step is to clean our roasted peppers and puree in a blender. The puree is strained through a fine mesh strainer. We try to push out as much moisture as possible. We are left with two things – one, a roasted yellow pepper paste, and two, pepper liquid from pressing through the strainer. We reserve our paste and make another paste using the liquid, with a small amount of sugar added to it. In a sauce pan the liquid mixture is reduced down over high heat. We stir constantly so not to burn, and what we are left with is a dark roasted yellow pepper paste that is packed with flavor. This paste is added to the stained version and is put on reserve for the ice cream base.

 

 

 

SaffronSaffron Infusion

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saffron! I’m sure you’ve all heard of it, right? Worth its weight in gold, and used in Spanish and Middle Eastern cooking. Yes, yes, all of these things, but it’s also wonderful in ice cream and desserts. A small amount goes a long way, so for the ice cream base, we add a pinch to our standard cane sugar base before pasteurization. Our roasted yellow pepper pastes are also added at this time. After pasteurization, and a brief steep, our base is cooled and is ready to churn.

 

 

 

Roasted Yellow Pepper Saffron and Honey

 

After churning, we layer in a generous portion of Ames Farm Honey, and the results are this wonderful flavor that is created by the combination of the saffron, roasted yellow pepper, and honey. It’s rich, creamy, without a hint of iciness. Another harvest vegetable successfully incorporated into our ice cream!

 

 

 

 

 

Roasted Yellow Pepper Saffron and Honey

Roasted Pepper Pastes:
1 Yellow Pepper, Large
2 teaspoons sugar

Ice Cream Base:
2 cups Heavy Cream
1 cup Milk
3/4 cup Cane Sugar
2 Eggs
1 teaspoon Sea salt
Pinch Saffron
Reserved Roasted Yellow Pepper Pastes

2-3 Tablespoons Honey, for layering into finished ice cream

 

Instructions:

1. Roast Pepper: Place pepper over an open flame, such as gas stove top burner. Char all sides of the pepper until the pepper’s skin is entirely black. Wrap the charred pepper tightly in plastic wrap or other type of sealable bag. Allow pepper to sweat for 5 minutes. Remove pepper and using fingers or knife, scrape all of the black skin off of the pepper (there may be a few flecks of char that don’t come off, and this is ok). Clean the pepper as you normally would, removing the seeds and any white ribs on the inside. You should be left with only the roasted pepper flesh.

2. Prepare Roasted Pepper Pastes: Using a blender or food processor, puree roasted pepper. Place a fine mesh strainer over a bowl, and pour pepper puree into strainer. Using a spatula, press all of the liquid through the strainer, until all that is remaining is paste. Reserve this paste for the ice cream base. Pour the roasted pepper liquid from the bowl into a medium sauce pan with 2 teaspoons of sugar. Over medium high reduce the liquid, stirring constantly so it doesn’t burn to the bottom of pan. Continue reduction, until an almost brown paste forms. Add the reduced paste to the paste from strainer and reserve for ice cream base.

3. Make ice cream base: Crack eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk fully.  Add cane sugar and whisk.  Add heavy cream, milk, salt, saffron, and roasted yellow pepper pastes.  Whisk until ingredients are combined.

4. Cook/pasteurize ice cream base: Over medium heat, whisk or stir base continuously until temperature reaches 165-170 degrees.  Remove from heat. Cool ice cream base to room temperature (an ice bath will do this in about 15-20 minutes). Cover base, and chill in refrigerator overnight.

5. Churn ice cream base in ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions. Swirl in honey after ice cream is in storage container. 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 9/25/15 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!

 

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Roasted Banana with Honey and Salted Walnuts

We don’t make enough banana ice cream.  That’s the truth.  It’s just so dang good.  This week’s flavor is a deconstructed version of my favorite banana bread recipe and it really is banana bread incarnate in ice cream form.  Maybe you don’t like banana flavored things, and for that I pray for you.   Or maybe you just don’t like walnuts with your bananas, and while I believe you are completely wrong, I forgive you.  Or you have nut allergies, and I am very sorry for you.  For everyone else, enjoy.

 

Roasted Banana Honey Salted WalnutIMG_1527Ames Farm Honey

 

 

 

 

 

 

The process begins with the bananas.  Similar to making banana bread, bananas are best for this recipe when they are very ripe to overripe.  However, for roasting purposes you’re better off with bananas that are not so ripe they are mush.  The bananas are chopped, tossed in a bit of melted butter, dusted with brown sugar and roasted to caramelization heaven.

 

Roasted Banana Honey Salted WalnutIMG_1528

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once caramelized, the bananas are pureed with bit of milk.  The puree is added to a brown sugar ice cream base with a hint of vanilla.

 

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The walnuts are roasted briefly on a sheet pan with a bit of butter, salted well and added in the last few minutes of the churn.  The honey is layered at the end.  Make sure to use quality honey – it makes all the difference in the world.  We have a lot of great honey in the midwest, and for this flavor we used Ames Farm.

 

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The result is seriously one of my favorite flavors we’ve made in awhile.  It’s full of rich roasted banana flavor, accented by a buttery, salty crunch from the walnuts and a bright sweet kick here and there from the honey swirl.  Pick up a pint at our kitchen this weekend!

 

Roasted Banana with Honey and Salted Walnut Ice Cream

Ingredients:

2 Ripe Bananas
2 Tablespoons Butter, melted
1 Cup Walnuts
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2Cup Honey
2 Cups Heavy Cream
1 Cup Whole Milk
3/4 Cup Brown Sugar plus more for dusting bananas
2 Eggs
2 teaspoons salt

Instructions:

 

1. Prepare the walnuts: Preheat oven to 300 degrees.  Toss 1 cup of walnuts with 1 tablespoon of melted butter and spread on sheet pan.  Generously sprinkle 1teaspoon of salt over the walnuts and place in oven for 5 minutes.  Remove, set aside and let cool.  Once cool, place walnuts in freezer bag or container and freeze until ready to go in ice cream.

2. Prepare the banana ice cream: Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Chop bananas into 1/2 inch chunks and toss with a the melted butter until coated.  Place on sheet pan and dust with brown sugar.  Place in oven and roast for approx 10-15 minutes or until bananas are starting to carmelize.  Puree with the one cup of whole milk you will be using for the ice cream base and set aside.

Crack eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk fully. Add brown sugar and whisk until sugar and eggs are combined. Add cream, banana puree, vanilla and salt and whisk again until all are fully incorporated.

Place ice cream base in a pot over medium heat, stirring continuously. Continue to heat mixture until temperature reaches 165 degrees. Remove from heat.  Cool the ice cream base to room temperature (an ice bath will do this in about 15-20 minutes) and then place in a container, cover, and chill in refrigerator overnight.

3.  Churn ice cream base in ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions. Add walnuts in last 5 minutes of the churning process.  Place the ice cream into container and swirl in the honey. Freeze in a tightly covered container for at least 4 hours, preferably overnight if you can wait.  Then, enjoy!

*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 3/6/15 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!
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Sweet Corn with Jalapeno Honey

Onward to another variation of one of the season’s greatest offerings – sweet corn! This week we got a little help from our friends Rich and Angela, who a few weeks back, made my new favorite sweet corn combination, jalapeno honey butter. After tasting it and watching them make it, I knew we had work this combo into one of this season’s sweet corn flavors. So here it is, this week’s flavor – Sweet Corn with Jalapeno Honey

 

 

Sweet Corn - Peter's Pumpkins FarmSweet Corn - ShuckedSweet Corn Puree

 

 

 

 

 

As we did last week, we picked up our corn at the Midtown Farmers Market from Peter’s Pumpkins. The ultra-sweet bi-colored variety. Whatever they’re doing, they’re doing it right. I can eat this corn raw right off the cob. It’s that good! Oh, and I did. For the ice cream, the corn is pureed with a little cream, steeped in the ice cream base, and strained after the cooking process. It’s now ready to churn, but not before we make that jalapeno honey…

 

 

Jalapenos - Wisconsin GrowersRoasting JalapenosRoasted JalapenosNordeast Nectars HoneyJalapeno Honey

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These are organic jalapenos from the Wisconsin Growers Cooperative near Durand, WI. They’re perfect. We first roast them on charcoal grill with a little wood added for that subtly smoky wood fired flavor. The peppers are peeled, seeded and deveined before they’re pureed in a food processor with wildflower honey from Garden Farme in Ramsey, MN. Initially I wasn’t going to put any butter in this jalapeno honey because I thought it would probably get lost with all of the other flavors here, but in the end, I may have added a touch of brown butter to this jalapeno honey puree. Shhhhhhhh, don’t speak. We layer the jalapeno honey into the ice cream at the end of the churn.

 

 

Sweet Corn with Jalapeno Honey

 

Sweet corn ice cream of any variety is luxurious on a number of levels, and this my friends, is no different. In fact, it’s beyond luxurious. The sweet corn ice cream with the jalapeno honey provides an explosion of flavor and a true party in your mouth. And for those supportive CSI full share members, this flavor will be part of your August share.

On the bright side, if you’re not a Full Share member, 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 8/15/14 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally. Prizes must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!

 

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Honey Churro with Cajeta

This week we’re throwing y’all a curve ball. The fruits are coming, but we’re taking a little hiatus while the berries ripen a bit more. Instead of local produce in our ice cream, this week we’re going to feature a few other wonderful local products to the Minneapolis area with our Honey Churro with Cajeta. Check it out…

 

 

Churros - Marissa's BakeryChurro SteepHoney - The Beez Kneez

 

 

 

 

 

Originally I was going to simply pair up a honey ice cream base with a cajeta caramel, but as I kept thinking about it, churros popped into my head…churro infusion! That’s it! These churros are from Marissa’s Bakery on the corner of 28th St and Nicolett Ave in South Minneapolis. Marissa’s has the mother load of all salty and sweet breads and pastries ascended from Mexico. The fried churros are perfectly crunchy, yet tender and sweet. We chop them up and toss them into our ice cream base to steep. After the steep, the churros are strained out and we add a little Beez Kneez Honey to sweeten it up. The Beez Kneez is a Minneapolis company on a mission to produce healthy hives, educate people about bees, and also deliver their honey to willing buyers. Check them out, if you haven’t heard of them already.

 

 

Poplar Hill Goat MilkCajeta 3Cajeta 6

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now that our honey churro base is ready to spin, we start making the cajeta. Cajeta is a caramel made with goat milk and a touch of cinnamon. This week we’re using Poplar Hill goat milk from Scandia, MN. The milk, sugar and a cinnamon stick are simmered down for a few hours until a golden caramel has formed. The cinnamon stick is strained out, and the cajeta is cooled. The cajeta has a beautiful silky texture and subtle, yet recognizable, flavor of goat milk. The cajeta is layered into the pints during packaging.

 

 

Honey Churro with Cajeta

 

 

This week’s curve ball – Honey Churro with Cajeta. Available to our Full Share CSI members as part of their July share.

 

If you’re not a Full Share memeber, 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 7/18/14 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally. Prizes must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!

 

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