Minneapolis Ice Cream – Page 5

August 30, 2012

Pistachio with Peach Marmalade

Week two of Peach madness here at FrozBroz. Last week we had a record response to our Brown Sugar, Grilled Peach with Cinnamon Syrup, so we thought we’d wrangle another peach flavor into our repertoire for you to drool over. After all, it is still peach season here in the upper Midwest. I decided I wanted to showcase this weeks peaches in a marmalade accompanied by one of peaches best friends, pistachios(FYI, peaches other best friend is ice cream). They make for a great pairing, so let us introduce our Pistachio with Peach Marmalade.

These are organic raw pistachios. Their color is bright as is their flavor. In the past, we’ve always used pistachios as an addition to our ice cream not only to pair with other flavors, but to add texture with crunch from the nut itself. This week I set out to flavor the ice cream with the pistachios themselves. To start with, stacios get tossed in the oven for a little roasty toasty.

When they come out of the oven, they go into the food processor with a little cream, and get pulverized. This pistachio mash gets steeped in our ice cream base and strained out through a fine mesh chinoise.

The base is salted and ready for action.

Oh, and speaking of ready for action. These peaches from Barnard Orchard in Wisconsin are ready for some serious simmer down action.

Peaches get diced and tossed in a sauce pan with sugar, lemon juice and candied ginger. We crush them a bit to release their juices and break up some of the larger chunks.

On the stove top for a simmering. The peaches breakdown, become translucent, and their flavors concentrate.

Peach Marmalade! Golden orange color and ripe peach flavor, this marmalade is ready for your mouth – and our ice cream. We layer it in alternating with our rich creamy pistachio ice cream base.

And the result: FrozBroz Pistachio with Peach Marmalade ice cream!

Want 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 (8/31/2012) 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 agree to give us a little feedback that can be shared with everyone else. Good luck!

August 16, 2012

Tomato Jam

It’s official, my favorite time of year has come…Tomato Season! I think we can safely say that the sooner we can purchase our produce after it is harvested, the higher it’s quality and flavor will be. That’s just one of many reasons to buy local, but as far as produce is concerned, it’s not always possible here in Minnesota, and some of our alternatives can satisfy those winter cravings. But tomatoes are one of those fruits that are really only good during the local harvest season. I’ve had plenty of “ok” tomatoes during the off season, but this time of year, tomatoes are a gold mine and their flavors are fantastic. As the harvest rolls in, many folks are canning and freezing their tomatoes, so here at FrozBroz we wanted to share another alternative for saving some of this tomato season for the months to come. And in the process put some of that hard work into our ice cream. So let’s get started with this week’s flavor…Tomato Jam!

Roma tomatoes purchased at our lovely Midtown Farmers Market. Check them out when you can, cause the vibes over there be jammin.

If you’ve ever canned tomatoes before, the first thing you have to do is get the skin off.

Hey look, these have the skin off! And to do that, we dropped them in a pot of boiling water for about 30 seconds and then into an ice bath to cool down.

The tomatoes get quartered, then seeds and innards removed.

Into a large sauce pan with sugar, fresh ginger, lemons and cinnamon stick.

We simmer it all down for a few hours until the tomatoes are translucent and almost falling apart, at which point we remove lemons and cinnamon stick and increase heat to reduce moisture content.

The end result is this gorgeous tomato jam. Let us tell you, this can be put on almost anything sweet or savory. Spread it on a crostini with goat cheese and caramelized onions or on your Serrano ham sandwich, OR if you’re us…

Layer it into your ice cream infused with Fennel Pollen. FrozBroz Tomato Jam Ice Cream!

Want 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 (8/17/2012) 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 agree to give us a little feedback that can be shared with everyone else. Good luck!

August 9, 2012

Sage Honey and Almond

We’re at the peak of harvest, and this is the time of year where we start diving more into the savory territory, putting our own sweet spin on the once a year local produce we get here. There are so many options its hard to choose, whether it be veggie or herb, or a combination of both. Sometimes its so overwhelming we need to step back and simplify in the wake of the bounty. Nuts and honey anyone? Yes. Throw in some sage? A perfect curveball.
From beginning to end the process is relatively simple, and totally rewarding

We don’t need to talk about how good this honey is a whole lot more, but we will becuase its that good. Its the difference between sweet, and incredible.

The honey was swirled into the cream as it went into the pints

The almonds were roasted ever so slightly, and tossed in a bit of salt.

Almonds were coarsely crushed and added in to be pervasive throughout.

The sage was roasted in the oven, a process similar to what we follow with fresh lavender, which mellows out the “perfumey” tastes, and intensifies the herb flavor. The leaves were ground and steeped into the base while hot, to fully infuse the sage flavor into the cream without leaving chunks of leaf to get caught in your teeth.

The end result is a light, sweet ice cream – sage providing a nice setup for the honey and almonds. A perfect summer cream, savory, but not really. Is that possible? As far as we’re concerned it is.

Want some? Leave a comment on our facebook page to be entered into the weekly drawing to win one of these two of a kind pints of craft ice cream. If you don’t have a facebook account, leave a comment right here on the blog. We’ll draw two winners on Friday afternoon (8/10/2012) 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 agree to give us a little feedback that can be shared with everyone else. Good luck!

August 2, 2012

Manhattan Cocktail

This time of year is total bliss for us over here at FrozBroz central headquarters. There are so many fruits and vegetables in season and so many on the horizon that flavor choices come easy. Last week we railed out our Cherry Pit Creme Fraiche with Rainier Cherry and Lemon Thyme, featuring Rainier cherries. It was such a success that it kept me thinking about cherries, which brought to mind one of my favorite supper club cocktails, the Manhattan. I mean, a Manhattan cocktail would be delicious in ice cream, right? And so it became my mission to create the FrozBroz Manhattan Cocktail ice cream. Let us begin!

Sweet cherries! To me, this is where it all begins. I love a classic Manhattan and even an Old Fashion, and a great maraschino cherry can make it all the better. So first things first; have to make a killer cocktail maraschino cherry with these gorgeous Bing cherries.

Cherries get pitted, and tossed in a sauce pan to simmer with sugar, lemon juice, cinnamon stick and almond extract. After a simmer down they come off the heat and we add…

Luxardo maraschino cherry liqueur. Made in Italy, this sauce is made with a distillation process using sour cherries. It packs a ton of flavor, and of course, alcohol, which helps displace the water content in our cherries. This will keep our maraschinos from turning icy in the cream.

The result are these beautiful maraschino cherries that are going to play an integral part to the backbone of our Manhattan. They get chopped up and added into our ice cream base.

And since were talkin backbones, lets not forget about the other crucial ingredients; Angostura bitters, sweet vermouth and orange zest.

Along with our maraschinos, they’re tossed in and working together to make this killer Manhattan ice cream base scream for whiskey.

Canadian whiskey that is. And why not make it a whiskey caramel? Ok, sure, yeah, we will! We simmer out a caramel with sugar, add cream, and lastly our Crown whiskey. The alcohol content in the herskey will lower the freezing temperature of the caramel, allowing it to remain soft in the ice cream. We layer the whiskey caramel into our pints during packaging.

There you have it…FrozBroz Manhattan Cocktail ice cream!

It can be yours.. 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 (8/3/2012) 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 agree to give us a little feedback that can be shared with everyone else. Good luck!

July 26, 2012January 29, 2024

Cherry Pit Creme Fraiche with Rainier Cherry and Lemon Thyme

The summer of berries continue. This week is probably the peak for Rainier Cherries, so if you haven’t had any yet, get out and get some. We got ours at the Seward Co-op. While I have a love for all varieties, these are my perennial favorite, partially because we don’t see them for long when and if they get here. That isn’t to say that locally grown cherries aren’t fantastic, but I was in a pinch this week and couldn’t resist the chance to work with peak season Rainiers.

I only recently found out that cherry pits aren’t necessarily garbage, and can be used to give desserts a more intense cherry flavor with an almond-like twist when cracked and roasted and steeped or boiled into a syrup. Interestingly enough, it turns out the cherry pits are often used to make cheap almond extract which I always thought had tasted like cherries, and now I know why.

“BUT SOMEONE TOLD ME THEY’RE POISONOUS”, you might be saying. While this is technically true (they do contain a tiny amount of cyanogenic glycosides) you would need to eat a ton of them to get sick, and roasting or boiling them greatly reduces this risk (from what we’ve read). They are more commonly used in cooking around the country than you might think.

For this flavor, we boiled them into a simple syrup and steeped it with the pits.

While the cherry pit syrup was steeping, the cherries were cooked down with a little sugar and then steeped with some sprigs of lemon thyme.

The base was made with Creme Fraiche to substitute for some of the regular cream which added a nice sourness and paired wonderfully with the almondy cherry pit syrup.

Right before churning, a little fresh minced lemon thyme was added directly to the base as well.

The result is a dense cherry flavored ice cream with an incredibly silky texture from the creme fraiche and a nice tart kick from the sweet Rainier cherries and Lemon Thyme. Beautiful if we do say so ourselves.

Rockin’.

Only two will have it, my precious. 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 (7/27/2012) 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 agree to give us a little feedback that can be shared with everyone else. And we’re serious about that. We’ll hunt you down for feedback. Get your food critic pants on – you might be the lucky winner and inquiring minds want an objective opinion. Good luck!