Strawberry Cabernet with Black Pepper

We just couldn’t resist making another strawberry flavor for the second week in a row. The season is nearing it’s close, but we just had too many ideas that we had to showcase one more for you all. And it was this weeks flavor idea, that like others in the past, started out as something different from how it ended. The truth is, we make a brand spanking new flavor every single week, and sometimes the path to success leads us in different directions than originally conceptualized. It could be a minor change, like this weeks, but it may have a palpable affect on how the flavor hits your taste buds. Our ice cream has many parts working together to make sweet love and money in your mouth. Though one could argue that we couldn’t go wrong with a flavor, given the ingredients that we use, but believe us, there are a number of outcomes with every flavor profile that we choose. This weeks flavor is no different, so lets get to work and work through our Strawberry Cabernet with Black Pepper.

 

 

 

Black Peppercorns! They get ground and added to our ice cream base for a backdrop that brings out spice and pairs charmingly with strawberries.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This week we stopped by Linden Hills Farmers Market to pickup these beauteous strawberries grown at Svihel Farms in Foley, MN. They get cleaned up, halved and into the oven at low temperature for a slow roast.

 

 

 

 

 

We haven’t used wine in a flavor since we rolled out our Tarragon Beurre Blanc back in October of last year and it was a great success. No different here. We are not wine experts, and would never claim to be, but this bottle poured out flavors of ripe berries and nicely balanced tannins. But lets not get too caught up in drinking this wine, because it’s about to play an integral part in this flavor. We poured the bottle into a sauce pan with sugar and a bay leaf and began the reduction process.

 

 

 

 

 

Simmered down, the Cabernet takes on a syrup like consistency and it’s flavors are condensed and power packed.

And this is where my conceptualized idea started changing. I began this adventure with thoughts of a black pepper ice cream with strawberry chunks and a red wine reduction layered in. After reducing the wine to the consistency and flavor I was looking for, I was left with less than what I’d planned for layering into the pints. Plan B…

 

 

 

 

Might as well toss roasted strawberries in with the Cabernet reduction. This was a good idea! The red wine reduction brought out flavors in those strawberries that I dream about. Seriously people, it took strawberry flavor to an 11 on a 10 point scale. This fruit bomb gets added into our black pepper base at the end of the churn. The result?…

 

 

 

 

A rich vibrant red ice cream with a strawberry flavor that I have always wanted in a strawberry ice cream. The strawberries and red wine reduction are working in perfect harmony with the black pepper deepening the field and leaving a satisfying peppery finish. This strawberry ice cream is made for strawberry ice cream lovers. It’s what we like to call “money! in! your! mouth!”

 

Like to try some?  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 (6/22/2012) at 4pm and will announce them on our facebook page (or email you if you’re comment resides here). 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!

 

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Smoked Strawberry Preserves with Candied Walnuts and Bleu

Sometimes flavor inspiration comes from the places we’d least expect it.  This one was inspired by a salad.  Specifically a spinach, walnut, strawberry and bleu cheese salad with balsamic vinaigrette.  I mentioned to my wife how much I liked this particular salad, and she said “you should make an ice cream flavor out of it”.  So I did. Or at least, my best interpretation of it.  Minus the spinach.

That’s as good as the story gets.  Strawberry season is upon us, so it was perfect timing to put this puppy to the test.

 

 

Starting with these gorgeous strawberries from Svihel farms in Foley, MN, that we picked up at our neighborhood farmers market, the Midtown Farmer’s Market

 

 

 

I opted to bypass the balsamic altogether, and instead smoke the strawberries and make a preserve out of them to add a different dimension to the flavor.

 

 

 

Onto the smoker they went..

 

 

 

Once they were finished with their applewood smoke bath, they were cooked down into a preserve to be swirled into the ice cream.

 

 

 

Smoky. Strawberry-y.

 

 

 

Then, the Fairbault Bleu Cheese.  If you follow us at all, you know we’re no strangers to cheese, and the cave aged Fairbault Dairy cheeses are spectacular.  This particular one is relatively mild, semi soft, and rife with wonderful moldy veins.  Perfect for ice cream.

 

 

 

 

The St. Pete’s Select went into the ice cream as small chips and chunks so it is almost a secret dimension to the flavor, but doesn’t overwhelm it.

 

 

 

Finally, walnuts.  At first I thought I’d add them in as plain salted walnuts, but at the last minute I decided to candy them, so they went into the ice cream with a salted toffee coating which gives them a little extra crunch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The finished ice cream is rippled with the smoky strawberry preserves, studded with crunchy, salted and candied walnuts, all offset by little bits of bleu cheese.  It’s a wild ride.

 

 

 

Like to try some?  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 (6/15/2012) at 4pm and will announce them on our facebook page (or email you if you’re comment resides here). 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!

 

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Peanut Butter and Spicy Coconut Curry

Up until now, we haven’t really discussed what makes a quality ice cream in the marketplace. There are obviously many factors that play into an ice creams’ overall quality, but as far as Federal standards are concerned we are talking about the amount of milkfat in the ice cream, and the amount of overrun. Overrun is the volume of air that is incorporated into the ice cream, and Federal standards allow for as little as 10% milkfat and as much as 100% overrun, meaning half of your ice cream is ice cream and the other half is air. This is standard practice for many commercial ice creams in our stores and why we see such a huge discrepancy in prices. There are differing designations for qualities, with the highest being “super premium”, which means milkfat content is somewhere between 14-16% and overrun is 25% or less. Super premium is where our product resides and always will. If there was an Ultra super premium designation, we would be in it, because our ice cream has high milkfat content and overrun of less than 25%. Next time you’re at the store, pick up a few differently priced pints and notice that some are heavier than others. When it comes to ice cream, typically the heavier the pint, the higher the quality. With our low overrun ice cream comes a texture difference as well. It is rich, creamy and more dense, which means it takes longer to breakdown in your mouth. And that’s good because you have longer to savor the flavor. So why are we bringing up this topic of quality now? Well, partly because we go to great lengths, (including controlling the pasteurization process) to make the highest quality ice cream possible. Second, as a consumer, the more you know the better right? Third, and most importantly, this weeks flavor is the epitome of quality in terms of low overrun. So lets get started…

 

This is peanut buttery goodness, and it was ground fresh from whole peanuts over at the Seward Coop just hours before hitting the creams. I mean, how cool is it to step up to a machine that is full of peanuts, press a button, and out squirts beautiful peanut butter? Maybe not that cool if you have a peanut allergy, but hey, it’s just a fantastic thing for peanut butter lovers. That’s us. The peanut butter gets whisked into the cream while we heat it up along with…

 

 

 

Coconut! As we do with our Seven Layer Bar ice cream, we toast the coconut before steeping it in our cream, which really intensifies the coconut flavors and infuses it into our base.

 

 

 

 

Mmmmmm, coconut milk. What would a curry be without coconut milk? Have you ever seen this brand before? You can get this and about five other brands you’ve never seen before over at United Noodles in Minneapolis. Please go there. If not for the largest selection of Asian grocery items from 15 different counties, then at least check out their new Deli(Unideli) for lunch. Either way, you won’t be disappointed.

The coconut milk gets added into the cream with the peanut butter and toasted coconut.

Ok, so this is where it gets interesting. When we order Thai food, we generally hit up True Thai. In our opinions, it’s some of the best Thai food Minneapolis has to offer, and it’s one of our neighborhood faves. This weeks flavor draws all  inspiration from True Thai’s Rama Spinach Curry with Roasted Peanuts dish,

 

 

which incorporates a red curry paste, like this one, with peanuts and coconut milk. It’s served with rice, steamed spinach and bean sprouts. Fantastic! The idea just seemed like it would work in ice cream.

This particular red curry paste is made with chilies, lemongrass, shallots, kafir lime, galangal and spices (coriander, cumin, and cardamom). We stir it in with all the others during heating/steeping.

After our base is heated and all ingredients are steeped, we strain it through a fine mesh strainer to achieve an ultra smooth base ready for the churn.

 

 

 

Peanut Butter and Spicy Coconut Curry ice cream. The viscosity of the peanut butter gave our ice cream makers a workout and by the end of the churn appeared to have virtually 0% overrun, making for uber richness. This weeks pints really do out weigh the competition!

 

 

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 (6/8/2012) at 4pm and will announce them on our facebook page (or email you if you’re comment resides here). 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!

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Smoked Bourbon Vanilla Bean

Since we’ve been on a bit of a spice kick with the Fennel Pollen and Baharat flavors in recent weeks, we thought we’d continue down the same path with a feature of the mainstay we’ve neglected until now -Vanilla.  We use vanilla a lot, but haven’t given it a feature yet. Over the past few years we’ve kicked tons of different vanilla ideas around,  but none have really stood out.  That isn’t to say we don’t worship a classic vanilla bean or french vanilla flavor, but we wanted something a little more exciting.

We both spend a lot of time in front of the grill, regardless of the season, and have been doing it for far longer than we have been making ice cream together. You could say we’re a bit fanatical when it comes to cooking over a fire.  So, when the idea of doing a smoked vanilla came up during a recent flavor meeting, it naturally resonated with both of us.  

 

It starts with a quality vanilla bean.  We have used many different forms of vanilla from various locations across the globe, but keep coming back to the Bourbon Vanilla bean for its dense vanilla flavor.  Since we obviously don’t have a local source for it, we always search for a fair trade option.

 

 

Next comes the smoke.  We explored and considered several different options for smoking the vanilla bean, including what wood to use, temperature, time, etc.  We experimented with a few, and ended up using hickory for our wood, and smoking the vanilla bean with heat to dry it out.   We learned a lot in the process and discovered some interesting variant paths both with different smoking wood and temperature, which we’ll certainly explore in future flavors.

 

 

 

Smokey the bean.

 

 

 

Once cooled, the whole beans were ground up to a fine powder, mixed and then steeped in the cream base before churning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And that’s that.  Smoked Bourbon Vanilla Bean.  Would pair excellent with just about anything, especially if it was cooked over an open flame.

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 (6/1/2012) at 4pm and will announce them on our facebook page (or email you if you’re comment resides here). 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!

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Bahārāt

One of my favorite cookbooks is “A Mediterranean Feast” by Clifford A. Wright. The book brings together the historical and culinary histories of all the diverse cuisines found in the Mediterranean. It is in this book that I was first introduced to bahārāt. Bahārāt means “spice” in Arabic, and is derived from the word bahār, which means “pepper”, so it is usually a spice blend containing pepper. In the Middle East, bahārāt is used in many savory dishes, and up until now, that is what I have used it for as well. The blend that I generally use contains pepper, allspice, cinnamon and ginger. Just reading that ingredient list could have anyone thinking it’s going into a sweet dish, but a pinch or two in your lamb burgers…mind blowing and life changing.  This is of course why I started thinking that bahārāt could make a killer ice cream. It has both sweet and savory aspects, and oh, not to mention mind blowing attributes. And since bahārāt is a spice blend, the list of spices span a wide range depending on the origin of the dish. So lets get to work…

 

Here are the players in the bahārāt that we’ve blended specifically for FrozBroz Craft Ice Cream. We always use whole spices whenever possible and if you must know, all of these came from Penzeys SpicesPenzeys is as local as it gets for a spice store in Minneapolis, with their origins coming from the Broz home state of Wisconsin. In the picture, let’s move left to right and start with the proverbial Cinnamon sticks, followed by Nutmeg, Allspice, Cloves, Coriander, Peppercorn mix, and in the middle, Cardamom.

 

 

 

 

 

Spice party! Let’s grind!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This party is grinding down. Bahārāt is now ready to be tossed into our ice cream base and churned.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FrozBroz Bahārāt Ice Cream! The explosion of spice hits immediately and continues to unfold as the ice cream melts in your mouth.

 

 

Would you like to try some? 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 (5/25/2012) at 4pm and will announce them on our facebook page (or email you if you’re comment resides here). 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!

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