May 2012 – FROZBROZ

May 31, 2012

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!

May 24, 2012

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 Spices. Penzeys 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!

May 17, 2012

Avocado with Chipotle Honey Candied Pepitas

For me, the onset of warm summer weather always brings mexican food to mind, but then again, so does any other type of weather. Needless to say, as we brainstorm flavor ideas, mexican inspired ideas regularly find their way into the fold. We had been thinking about wanting to incorporate pepitas (pumpkin seeds) into a flavor, as well as avocado. We almost kicked ourselves when we realized, of course, these two made perfect sense together. Once it hit us, we were off to the races.

Avocados are a fruit we would kill to be able to have a local source for. Unfortunately our climate makes that mostly impossible, so instead we look to fair trade and organic sources for one of natures most perfect creations, that just happen to be hitting their peak season now.

In this recipe, we puree the raw avocado into the cream base. It’s richness translates very nicely into the cream, and it provides a subtle yet forward flavor that is recognizable but not overwhelming. The process brought about other ways such as roasting and steeping as a means to incorporate, but for now we stuck with something straight forward. Man these things are tasty.

The pepitas were a fun twist to add to this flavor and provided both a welcome crunch as well as a little heat, and salt.

Since we enjoy messing with the add-ins as much as the base, we decided to go whole-hog on the mexican route, and threw some chipotle into the mix- but not before they were roasted and salted well.

For the candy coating, we went with pureed chipotles and Ames Farm honey.

The roasted pepitas were tossed in the mix while hot and allowed to bake a bit more before cooling. The final result was just short of a brittle.

To finish, the candied chipotle honey pepitas were thrown in right at the end of the churn.

Avocado with Chipotle Honey Pepitas

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 (5/18/2012) 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!

May 10, 2012

Lemon Poppy Sour Cream Chevre with Rhubarb Compote

If you’re a vegetable gardener in Minnesota (and even if you’re not) you probably know that it’s prime season for one of the first harvested vegetables here in the North – Rhubarb! There is a lot of talk right now in the local culinary community about getting more out of this underutilzed vegetable that is so plentiful in many of our gardens this time of year. I think it’s safe to say that when someone mentions rhubarb, the first thing that comes to mind is probably a dessert, say maybe rhubarb pie, or rhubarb crisp(check out last years rhubarb crisp flavor HERE). And being that we are ice cream makers, this one is going to be a dessert as well – Lemon Poppy Sour Cream Chevre with Rhubarb Compote.

We’ve mentioned before that we get inspiration for our flavors from a wide range of sources, and sometimes it’s simply from seeing a recipe on a television show or a magazine. I ran across a lemon poppy cheesecake recipe a month or so ago that had me thinking about all of these flavors in ice cream.

So to get started I rocked out a cheesecake-esk ice cream base using the following four ingredients…lemon zest, poppy seeds, sour cream – from Westby Creamery in Westby, WI and chevre cheese – from Donnay Dairy in Kimball, MN

Together these flavors make a nice rich, creamy flavorful backbone for the rhubarb compote to sit with.

Rhubarb! This is from a rhubarb plant that goes back three generations on my in-laws side of the family. It is essential heirloom rhubarb, and it is beautiful!

Rhubarb gets choppy chopped and into a pan with sugar, orange zest and a vanilla bean. We simmer it down and evaporate as much liquid as possible.

At this point we toss in a little Elderflower liqueur, which deepens the compote’s flavor and gives it a nice floral tone.

The finished rhubarb compote is thick and jammy with a perfect balance of sweet and tartness. We be Jammin. It gets layered in to the pints during packaging leaving little tart flavor pockets among the rich lemon poppy sour cream chevre ice cream.

Lemon Poppy Sour Cream Chevre with Rhubarb Compote! More Minnesota Grown vegetables used the FrozBroz way.

We have 2 days left in our fundraising campaign on Indiegogo. If you haven’t donated already and can help, we would really appreciate it. You can donate on our site by clicking here: INDIEGOGO/FROZBROZ

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 (5/11/2012) 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!

Would you like to see more of this kind of ice cream or be able to buy it online? Then please, help us with our fundraiser on indiegogo, we only have 2 DAYS left and need all the help we can get! And in exchange you’ll be one of the first to get our ice cream. Visit our page at www.indiegogo.com/frozbroz

May 3, 2012

Fennel Pollen

Sometimes simple is best. Over the course of the last year we’ve explored ice creams that sometimes include up to 5 main flavors. Big flavors like these greatly open up the variety and combinations we can make, but can also overshadow the greatness of one of those ingredients on their own.

In this instance, it was extremely tempting to pair the Fennel pollen with almonds, or honey or pistachios, etc. But in the end, the flavor of this particular spice turned out to be so complex and so incredible in ice cream that it demanded the stage to itself, at least for its first foray into our flavor cache.

Fennel pollen is an expensive spice, not so much because of being hard to find, but because of how difficult it is to harvest. It’s gathered by shaking it off the buds of fennel flowers and can take quite a bit of time to collect just an ounce. It has a golden appearance, and kind of tastes like it.

We steeped the fennel pollen in the cream to fully extract as much flavor as possible. The batter was then churned immediately. It seemed almost too easy.

We expected a unique flavor, but nothing like this. Once paired with the cream and sugar base, the obvious flavors such as anise blossomed, but so did caramel and curry notes. It could pair extremely well with a lot of different desserts or dishes, but to appreciate the depth of the flavor it really needs to be eaten all by itself.

Gold.

If we ever imagined an ice cream flavor for royalty, this would be it. We’re very excited about the how it turned out, and have a feeling this will be a Froz flavor for a long time to come.

As we do every week, we’ll be giving away two pints of this flavor. Just leave a comment on our facebook page or in the comments here to be entered into the drawing. We’ll draw two winners on Friday afternoon (5/4/2012) 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!

Would you like to see more of this kind of ice cream or be able to buy it online? Then please, help us with our fundraiser on indiegogo, we only have 8 days left and need all the help we can get! In exchange you’ll be one of the first to get our ice cream. Visit our page at www.indiegogo.com/frozbroz