Minneapolis Craft Ice Cream – Page 16

November 17, 2011

Cranberry Compote Quark + Toasted Walnuts

Let the festivities begin.

The seasons constantly drive our creativity in some form or another. In the Spring, Summer, and Fall we get to take advantage of the growing season and the harvest. In the Winter we’re driven first by the holidays and then by the pure, unadulterated boredom that follows until Spring. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The holidays are in front of us and this is one of our first flavors drawn from traditional holiday fare.

Sometimes, its a matter of taking a few staple ingredients and figuring out how to make them just a little more interesting. In this case, we knew we wanted to use cranberries in a flavor leading up to Thanksgiving.

A few years ago I made a cheesecake topped with a Cranberry compote to bring to the Thanksgiving feast and I thought it would be an interesting approach to an ice cream flavor.

Awfully pretty in their fresh state, no?

To start, the compote. To nip the bitterness of the cranberries’ in the proverbial bud, this particular compote leans on lemon juice and lemon zest.

Compote…

In place of a cheesecake crust, we opted for crushed walnuts toasted on the dark side and lightly candied with brown sugar.

Not a bad snack either…

Finally, to get the whole dimension of the cheesecake, we opted for some Quark cheese from Milton Creamery in Iowa. It needs to be noted that Milton is the home of one of our favorite cheeses in the land (Prairie Breeze). Both can be found at our almost daily haunt, the Seward Co-Op in South Minneapolis.

Quark is a fresh, soft cheese similar to cream cheese but has a tangier flavor that stands out better in ice cream. In this case some was blended into the base of the cream, and some of the quark was frozen ahead of time and crumbled into the base for an extra rich bite here and there.

Its more fun to say “Quark” anyway.

Lastly, the compote was layered in the pint as the ice cream went in.

A nice red compliment to the white cream…if we do say so ourselves.

Want to try? As we do every week, we’ll be giving away two pints. 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 (11/10/2011) 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!

November 10, 2011

German Chocolate Cake In Your Ice Cream

Every year I make a German chocolate cake for my mother-in-law’s birthday. It’s been her birthday cake tradition for as long as my wife can remember. Along with this cake, I’ve been making a coffee ice cream to accompany it, which pairs nicely with the espresso in the cake batter itself. I mean, I totally feel sorry for you if you don’t like the combination of coffee and chocolate. My mother in-law? She loves the coffee and chocolate combo, and so the tradition lives on.

Ironically, inspiration from this yearly tradition has inspired us to do something nontraditional. Instead of serving you cake and ice cream, we’re serving cake IN your ice cream – German chocolate cake in your ice cream that is.

Lets get this party started. Lets get this party started right. Chocolate/Coffee cake style.

Probably my favorite part about this cake is the inner filling. It starts with shaved coconut and toasted pecans. Add sugar, egg yolks, evaporated milk, and vanilla…

…this mixture is cooked on the range until it’s thick enough to coat the back of a spoon – aka nappé.

I could eat this for breakfast.

After slicing the cake in half, I spread filling on the bottom half.

Throw on the top…

Oh yeah! Ganache! How could we forget? This is the same stuff we use to make our cocoa truffles for our Peace Coffee Cocoa Truffle ice cream. Devine Fair Trade Chocolate whipped with hot cream until smooth and velvety.

Happy Birthday Babs!

Covered in ganache and ready to slice.

Two frozen slices of German chocolate cake ready to be packed with coffee ice cream. Another FrozBroz original – German Chocolate Cake In Your Ice Cream.

And as every week previous, you can win one of two available pints of this weeks 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 (11/10/2011) 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!

October 20, 2011

Ginger Cashew Honey

One of the best parts of making all of this ice cream is meeting the local farmers and food purveyors. There are so many fascinating stories and interesting people with a passion for food, we really would have to try to NOT be inspired.

A perfect example of this is the folks from Nordeast Nectars.

Nordeast was born out of updates in Minneapolis City ordinance allowing residents to keep bees within city limits.

The modern day bee is a vital cog in nature’s food chain and is rapidly dwindling in numbers. The rise in use of pesticides and factory farming has nearly choked the American honey bee out of its natural, rural habitat and American farmers are now having to import them to acheive successful pollination.

Believe it or not, honeybees are finding a happier home in cities where flowering plants aren’t covered in five kinds of weed and pest killer. Nordeast Nectars is making a point to champion urban bee keeping, and will be doing some really fantastic things in the next few years to do their part in repairing the bee population . Lucky for us, they’ve taken their passion for giving honeybees a place to thrive and made some of the best, and most unique tasting honey around.

Needless to say when we got our hands on one of these amber jars of beauty, ice cream wasn’t far behind.

What goes good with honey? Actually just about anything, but especially nuts. And we just happened to have a pile of cashews that were dying for attention.

Not so fast..

Rather than just throw handfuls of these into our base, we decided to double down and make a ginger cashew butter to provide a nice hearty cashew flavor.

Smooth.

We incorporated this fresh ginger cashew butter into the cream and threw in a bunch of salty, crunchy cashew chunks at the end.

As the ice cream was packed into the pint containers, that incredible Nordeast Nectars honey was swirled in, creating luscious little pockets of floral goodness.

And as every week previous, you can win one of two available pints of this weeks 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 (10/21/2011) at 4pm and will announce them on our facebook page. Our only condition is you must be able to pick it up here in Minneapolis. Good luck!

September 29, 2011

Peace Coffee Chocolate Truffle

As the Autumnal Equinox passes and our days and nights begin to feel cooler and shorter, we got to thinking about flavors that are warm and comforting. We couldn’t think of two more warm and comforting flavors than coffee and chocolate. You know that feeling you get in the Fall when the day turns dark and you just want to curl up on the couch with a blanket and a tub of ice cream. FrozBroz has you covered – Peace Coffee Chocolate Truffle.

We start with Guatemalan Dark coffee beans roasted here in Minneapolis at our favorite Peace Coffee. Check them out if you haven’t already at www.peacecoffee.com. They are doing good things for coffee farmers and our community.

We infuse our cream with coffee using a french press.

Now let us make some truffles with Divine Dark Chocolate. Divine is a fair trade chocolate that is 45% owned by the farmers – and it’s delicious.

Chop it!

We make a nice ganache, let it cool, chop it up again, and toss in cocoa powder – truffles.

Here’s the final product for your couch consumption – Peace Coffee Cocoa Truffle.

You can win one of two available pints this week — leave a comment on our facebook page to be entered into the drawing. If you don’t have a facebook account, make your comment right here on the blog. We’ll draw two winners on Friday afternoon (9/30/2011) at 4pm and will announce them on our facebook page. Our only condition is you must be able to pick it up. Good luck!

September 15, 2011

Plum Jam with Maple Orange Walnuts

In anticipation of our trip to Minnesota Peach, David Griffin’s fruit and vegetable farm in Cold Spring, MN(http://vimeo.com/27403794), we got to thinking about what we could pull together as a representative ice cream. David’s niece, Molly, kept us updated as to what was ripe and in season. It seemed every weekend something came up and we weren’t able to make it out to the farm. Fortunately, this gave us time to conceptualize this one – Plum Jam with Maple Orange Walnuts.

We start with Cinderella Plums from Michigan, purchased at the Seward Coop. These plums are sweet and bright, but wait until we get our hands on some of David’s “Surprise” plums next year.

Pitted and sliced, then thrown in a pan and toss with sugar and lemon.

Simmer Down. Plum Jam. Like Jammin? Check out Serious Jam www.serious-jam.com/ located here in Minneapolis.

These Walnuts get slow roasted with Wild Country Maple Syrup from Lutsen, MN , then finished with orange zest, cinnamon and salt.

Thanks to Minnesota Peach for a huge amount of inspiration. To that – Plum Jam with Maple Orange Walnuts.

As usual, you can win one of two available pints this week — leave a comment on our facebook page at facebook.com/frozbroz to be entered into the drawing. If you don’t have a facebook account, make your comment right here on the blog. We’ll draw two winners later this afternoon and will announce them on our facebook page. Our only condition is you must be able to pick it up. Good luck!