Yogurt Peony

Spring is drawing to a close, but our celebration continues as we try to utilize all that is available to us here in Minnesota to create new flavors on a weekly basis. This week we’re celebrating a flower that is probably recognizable to everyone that lives in Minnesota. It’s the peony! They are at the end of their bloom right now, and not only are they gorgeous, they’re extremely fragrant. We are going to try to extract the peony fragrance and put it in our ice cream, along with another little buddy, Greek yogurt, to enhance the experience. Let’s get started with this week’s flavor – Yogurt Peony.

 

Greek YogurtPeony

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To start with, I wanted to create an added richness to the texture of this week’s flavor, but I also wanted to see how the sour attributes of a cultured yogurt would pair with the floral tones of the peony. To do this, I added Greek yogurt to our organic cane sugar ice cream base. Here we have a peony in full bloom with a bud in the upper left that is about to bloom. Not to gross anyone out, but peonies are extremely sweet smelling, and for that very reason ants cover their dense flower buds, eat the nectar that they produce, and this allows the peony to open up and bloom.Don’t worry, there are no ants in the ice cream. I repeat, there are no ants in the ice cream.

Peony petalsPeony petals steeping in yogurt base

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next, we want to try to extract as much of that sweet peony fragrance into our cream. The flower petals are removed, soaked in water, washed again, and spun dry in a salad spinner. We add the petals to our yogurt base, cook and steep, in hopes that we will achieve full floral flavor. The petals are strained out; the base is cooled. Ice cream goes through many changes in flavor over the course of its raw existence to being made and sitting in the freezer for a week or two. After cooking, steeping and cooling, the floral tones were barely hitting my palate on the back end of the finish.

 

Right after the ice cream was churned I got a nice yogurt flavor with a distinct floral finish that tasted just as the peony smells. After packaging and sitting in the freezer for a few days, the floral tones have again diminished. But, that is not the end…ice cream is a peculiar thing – it’s flavor will continue to change and develop over time. It is now up to fate to see where this one ends up.

 

Yogurt Peony

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yogurt Peony – A rich taste of Spring and Summer. Want to know how this week’s flavor has aged?… 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 6/20/14 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!   Facebook Twitter More...

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.