We made The New York Times!!!
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/02/magazine/who-made-that-ice-cream-cone.html
Lilac
Easily my favorite flower, Lilacs mark the beginning of spring, or in the case of this year – summer. Once they are in bloom their smell is unmistakeable. In my opinion, it’s the best time of the year for many reasons, and lilacs are a pretty awesome part of it.
We’ve toyed with exploring floral flavors before, such as with our valentines day inspired flavor earlier this year – Rose with Cinnamon Honey. The idea of lilac ice cream has been percolating since last spring, but since their blooming season is so short we didn’t have enough time to get it done. With a whole year to prepare, (and big thanks to Erik’s neighbor for letting us steal from her tree) it was time to make it happen.
The first step to making this ice cream is to pick the little flowers from the lilac branch and make sure that there is no green stem left. Any green part at all adds a bitterness to the cream and taints the lilac flavor. Its a very laborious process because so many tiny flower buds have to be plucked perfectly to provide enough of the lilac flavor – but with some patience, and a good cup of coffee, its cathartic.
The cream base is made using our standard recipe with organic cane sugar. I toyed with the idea of using coconut milk or adding chevre, but in the end kept it clean to maximize the flavor of the lilac. The lilac flowers are steeped in the base to suck out every ounce of flavor we can get. After the steep, the flowers are strained out right before the churning process begins.
Finally, Lilac ice cream. It’s a light, delicately floral bite that tastes ever so subtly like that wonderful lilac fragrance, without being overpowering.
Want to try it? You can win one of the only two pints in the world, filled with 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. 2 lucky winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 5/31/13 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally and give us feedback. Pints must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!
Cherry Torte
Birthdays often carry countless traditions. Over time, some of those traditions fade away, but for my father-in-law, there is one birthday tradtion that has stayed with him since his early childhood. After the first taste of his mother’s cherry torte, it was a request that never faded when his birthday came around. Now years later Charlotte, his mother, has passed away, but my mother-in-law graciously makes Charlotte’s cherry torte recipe, and my father-in-law reluctantly shares his birthday tradition with the rest of his family. So this week, one week after my father-in-law’s birthday, I set out to deconstuct and recreate Charlotte’s cherry torte in FrozBroz fashion; ice cream style! Let’s get started with this week’s flavor: Cherry Torte.
Contrary to my wife’s family’s belief, I actually can reproduce Charlotte’s short bread crust with flawless results. This crust is a key component as it adds texture, nuttiness, and the integral buttery flavor of traditional shortbread. To achieve this, sugar, butter and flour are mixed together before adding crushed pecans, at which point the dough is pressed into a pan and baked. After cooling, the crust is broken up into chunks, and for the ice cream, we toss the chunkers in toward the end of the churn.
Cream Cheese! The second layer of the torte consists of cream cheese whipped with sugar, vanilla, and whipped cream. For the ice cream, we incorpoarte the cheese and vanilla into our pure cane sugar ice cream base during the cooking process. This sets the stage for an ultra rich cream cheese ice cream base.
Next, the cherry topper! This is where I’m going to break tradtion a little. At this point, the torte could essentially be constructed with a can of sweet cheeries in heavy syrup; crust chunkers fill the bottom of a pan, the cream cheese/whipped cream is spread on, and the canned cherries in heavy syrup top it all off. I made the desision to go with tart cherries in water for the ice cream. I wanted the cherries to contrast the sweet ice cream by adding that tart twist. We puree the tart cherries and water, then simmer down with a bit of cane sugar on the stove top until the cherries reach proper viscosity. The cherry jam is still sweet, but brings that element of tartness. We layer it into the pints during packaging.
The result is a rich cream cheese ice cream studded with pecan shortbread chunkers and layered with a tart cherry syrup jam. This is a FrozBroz tradition that is destined to never fade. Happy Birthday Dan!
Want to try it? You can win one of the only two pints in the world, filled with 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. 2 lucky winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 5/24/13 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally and give us feedback. Pints must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!
Fenugreek Praline Pecan
The first time I considered Fenugreek as an ice cream flavor was after trying some gouda cheese with fenugreek seeds in it; amazed at the sweetness and maple like flavor the fenugreek added. After some deliberation, and some more research, I discovered that fenugreek is one of the main flavor components of fake maple syrup. My curiosity was piqued, and I was sold. To round the flavor out, I chose to add caramel coated pecans to the mix and make it our own spiced up version of praline pecan.
First the pecans..
To make praline pecans we first roast and salt whole pecans and smash them into smaller, more bite friendly sized pieces.
Then we make a simple caramel that is boiled to a “hard crack”, so it doesn’t pull your fillings out when you bite into it, but instead as a crunch. The pecans are added in at the very end and then cooled to keep the caramel coating.
After the pecans are cooled they are broken out of their caramel sheath and end up with a perfect caramel praline coat.
For the ice cream, we steep the Fenugreek seeds in our organic cane sugar base and strain them out before the churn.
What we get is a spiced maple kissed ice cream studded with crunchy praline pecans.
Want to try it? You can win one of the only two pints in the world, filled with 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. 2 lucky winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 5/17/13 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally and give us feedback. Pints must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!
Sweet Pea Almond with Rye Caramel
Springtime! It’s coming, it’s coming, it’s coming! Right? It is coming, right? Finally, it is actually here; we think. Soon, the fruits of Spring will start showing their colors, and our flavors will start reflecting all that is seasonable in Minnesota. In preparation for such a late start this year, our friends over at Bossy Acres have been busy in their new greenhouse. Last year Bossy was accepted into the Organic Field School incubator program, giving them access to more land, training, and equipment usage. As part of the program, they are allowed to use a portion of the Gardens of Eagen greenhouse, which gives them a big head start with these Minnesota winters. Such a head start, that it’s enough to inspire this weeks flavor: Sweet Pea Almond with Rye Caramel.
We are so itching to get on to Spring and Summer flavors, and we can’t tell you how happy we were to get a message from the great farmers at Bossy Acres letting us know they had pea shoots for us. It couldn’t have come at a better time. Just look at how gorgeous they are. If you haven’t had them, you best find out the next time Bossy is selling at the market, because these pea shoots epitomize Spring with their snappy yet tender and sweet, earthy pea flavor. This is where it all begins…
For the ice cream, I decided I wanted to infuse the sweet pea and almond flavor into our ice cream base. To get the most flavor out of the almonds, we first slow roasted them in the oven and gave them a quick pulse in the food processor.
The pea shoots and crushed almonds are steeped in our cane sugar base, then strained through a fine mesh strainer. The sweet pea and almond-infused ice cream base is ready for churning.
The final component of this week’s flavor is a rye caramel. As soon as I heard “pea shoots”, I immediately had visions of creamed peas on rye bread. Ice cream translation: sweet pea ice cream with rye caramel. For the caramel, we first ground whole rye berries and steeped them in our cream. We then caramelized granulated sugar and made a traditional caramel adding in our rye infused cream after caramelization. The result is a light and subtle rye flavored caramel that gets layered into the sweet pea almond ice cream during packaging.
Springtime! It’s here y’all! At least it’s here in our Sweet Pea Almond with Rye Caramel ice cream with Bossy Acres pea shoots!
Want to try it? You can win one of the only two pints in the world, filled with 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. 2 lucky winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 5/10 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally and give us feedback. Pints must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!