Apple Oat and Brown Sugar

Our journey down apple road continues this week. This time around, we will be using a newer technique, to us, to get the apples in the ice cream. A technique that allows us to create a creamy ice cream flavored with what ever fruit or vegetable we’re using, while eliminating any iciness due to moisture content. It’s something we’ve been playing around with a lot lately, and so far has been very successful. And to bring the creaminess up another level, I’m using rolled oats. I’ll explain how that works later, but for now, lets get this week’s flavor underway – Apple Oat and Brown Sugar

 

 

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To begin, we start with regent apples from Hoch Orchard here in Minnesota. Everyone has their apple varieties of choice for eating and cooking. For me, the regent offers great apple flavor and is versatile for both good eating and cooking. Here, I want extract all of the apple flavor I can get, starting by breaking down the apples into two different parts – cider and pulp. First things first, we peel and core our apples. The apples are pureed in a blender until smooth. We then strain the puree through a fine mesh strainer set over a bowl. The cider is pushed through, and the solids are drained until the pulp is nearly dry. Getting as much of the moisture content out is important, unless you’re making a sorbet. Moisture is ice creams enemy.

 

 

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The pressed pulp is spread thin on a sheet pan lined with a silpat baking mat. Baked at a low temperature to eliminate as much residual moisture. The baked apple pulp is reserved for the ice cream base.

 

 

 

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Next, we use the reserved apple cider. With the addition of a very small amount of cane sugar, the cider is brought to a boil and reduced into a thick syrup. This syrup is ultra concentrated with apple flavor. The syrup is added into our brown sugar ice cream base, which I used for this flavor to bring out some deeper caramel tones. As I mentioned in my opening, I wanted to really bring on the creaminess with this flavor by infusing with rolled oats. The oats are added into the base before pasteurizing. During the cooking process, the oats release their starches into the base making for an ultra silky texture. The oats are strained out after the base is pasteurized and the reserved baked pulp is whisked in. After cooling, the base is ready to churn.

 

 

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The road to apple ice cream stops here. A brown sugar ice cream made ultra creamy with an oat and apple infusion. Mission accomplished!

 

 

 

 

 

Apple Oat and Brown Sugar

Apple Prep:
4 Apples, Regent, peeled, quartered, and cored
2 teaspoons sugar

Ice Cream Base:
2 cups Heavy Cream
1 cup Milk
3/4 cup Brown Sugar
1/2 cup Rolled Oats
2 Eggs
3/4 teaspoon Sea salt
1/4 teaspoon Cinnamon
reserved apple syrup and paste

 

Instructions:

1. Prepare Apples: Using a blender or food processor, puree apples. Place a fine mesh strainer over a bowl, and pour apple puree into strainer. Using a spatula, press all of the liquid through the strainer until all that is remaining is paste. Reserve paste. Pour the apple 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 a thick apple syrup forms. Remove from heat and reserve apple syrup.

2. Bake Apple Pastea: Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Spread apple paste in a thin layer onto a sheet pan lined with a silpat or other baking mat. Bake for 20-25 minutes until relatively dry. Remove from the oven and reserve for ice cream base.

3. Make ice cream base: Crack eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk fully.  Add brown sugar and whisk.  Add heavy cream, milk, salt, and cinnamon. Whisk until ingredients are combined. Add rolled oats and whisk to combine.

4. Cook/pasteurize ice cream base: Over medium heat, whisk or stir base continuously until temperature reaches 165-170 degrees.  Remove from heat, and strain through a fine mesh strainer. Add both apple syrup and apple paste to strained ice cream base and whisk vigorously until combined. 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. 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 10/9/15 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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Oat Rum Raisin w/ Cinnamon Caramel

Ever since we originally created the Oat w/Maple Brown Sugar, we’ve been enamored with how silky ice cream gets from steeping with oats. Not to mention the incredible oat flavor.  I wanted to use that base to create a flavor as a play on the oatmeal raisin cookie.  It wasn’t until right at the end that the thought occurred to me – “I should probably soak these raisins in rum”.  Man, am I glad I did.  So now you have our play on both rum raisin and the oatmeal raisin cookie.  Why not combine them?

oats

Brown Sugar

oat steep

 

 

 

 

 

 

First the base.  These fine organic rolled oats are combined with our brown sugar ice cream base and put through a warm steeping process.  During the steep, the starch is extracted from the oats much like what happens when you make oatmeal.  That starch is what gives the oatmeal its sticky consistency –  the more you cook the oats, the more of that starch comes out and the stickier the oatmeal gets.  We like the starch. The starch in ice cream is a natural stabilizer and gives the ice cream an extra silky texture.  The oats are strained out after the steep is complete.

 

Caramelzinfandel caramel

 

 

 

 

 

 

The caramel is a straightforward sugar based caramel, infused with cinnamon when the cream is added at the end.  The cream helps keep the caramel a light sauce instead of something  something that pulls your teeth out of your head while you try to eat it.

 

RaisinRum RaisinRum Raisin

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here comes the curveball. The original idea was to simply add raisins to the mix to complete the idea of the oatmeal raisin cookie.  Instead they were soaked in rum overnight, as we’d do for a straight rum raisin.  The raisins soak up the rum and turn into boozey candy that gets thrown into the ice cream right at the end of the churn.

 

Oat Rum Raisin with Cinnamon Caramel

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This scoop a fantastic representation of the oatmeal raisin cookie with a cinnamon caramel holding it all together amongst a deluge of rum raisins.
Like to try some? 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. Winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 3/21/14 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!

Don’t forget about our pint sale,TONIGHT Thursday March 20, 2014. Click HERE for details.

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Charred Vanilla Greek Yogurt and Muesli

One of the absolute best things to come out of making all of these ice cream flavors, is meeting local purveyors and farmers and relishing the fruits of their hard work.  We are very lucky here in the midwest and we’ve made no secret about the joy it brings us to give these important people all of the credit we can, since our ice cream would be nothing without them.  This week we’re featuring two of them, because they both deserve attention for their fantastic products.

Our affinity for breakfast flavors is no secret, so when we got our hands on this Seven Sundays Gourmet Muesli it was a given that we were going to make some ice cream with it.  Seven Sundays makes some fantastic muesli and we’ve been enjoying to say the least.  Greek yogurt and muesli are best friends, and our charred vanilla has nary an enemy.   It was hard to go wrong with this one, and indeed it is a winner.

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We first played around with oats in ice cream at the beginning of this year with our Oat w/ Maple Brown sugar and quickly found that the texture the starch from the oats provides the ice cream is really second to none in silkiness.  The same principal applies with the “Original” muesli from Seven Sundays- except along with the oats are whole grain barley and rye, along with currants, pepitas, flax seeds, raisins, coconut, banana chips and more.

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Greek Yogurt was a shoe in choice for our ice cream base, which isn’t a total yogurt base, but has enough yogurt to give it that signature acidity and keep the creaminess of regular cream as well.  What makes this even better, is now you can buy  Greek-Style Yogurt from Rochdale farms straight from our home state of Wisconsin.  It is nothing short of incredible.

Charred Vanilla

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We also use our signature charred vanilla in this flavor to give it that vanilla punch that works so harmoniously with these flavor.  The based is completed by a full steep of the muesli which brings out the starches we talked about before and takes on some of the flavors of the rest of the spices and flavors of the muesli.  Our job is easy.  During the churn we sprinkle some extra muesli into the base to provide a little extra texture to the bite.

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And there you have it.  A wonderfully silky charred vanilla greek yogurt ice cream speckled from a muesli steep and a sprinkle of muesli at the end.