December 2013 – FROZBROZ

December 25, 2013

Manchego w/Zinfandel Caramel

Christmas is now in the rear view mirror as is most of 2013, which means New Years eve celebrations are almost upon us. New Years eve is synonymous with indulgence in good food, and good drinks, and like last year’s White Chocolate Pop Rocks w/ Champagne caramel, we wanted to do something apropos. Where I come from, no good party happens without a plate full of good cheese. Likewise, a plate full of good cheese pairs fantastically with good wine, and that brings us to this week’s flavor, Manchego w/ Zinfandel Caramel.

This flavor starts with my one of my favorite Spanish Manchego. Its a spanish cheese from the La Mancha region, and this particular selection is a raw milk manchego. Its buttery, with a nice salty bite and a great cheese-y flavor that pairs incredibly well with fruit and a bold red wine.

For the foundation of this flavor, the manchego went into the cream 2 ways- some was finely grated and melted into the base during the cooking process. More was coarsely grated and tossed in at the end to provide an extra oomph with the occasional bite of cheese.

The caramel begins as a standard sugar and water recipe, but is finished with a bit of cream to cool it first, and then the zinfandel right at the end to ensure the flavor doesn’t boil off.

The caramel is swirled into the ice cream as its packed into the pint. It is a wonderfully rich, manchego ice cream decorated with ribbons of zinfandel caramel.

Like to try some? 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 12/27/13 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!

December 19, 2013

Gingerbread with Lemon Cream

The holiday season is in full swing which means folks are busy baking up all their favorite cookies, cakes, pies and pastries to share with family and friends. And hey, we’re no different. So when my loving wife suggested that we make gingerbread cookies with our four-year-old son to swing into the holiday spirit, I concurred, and then immediately got caught up with the idea of gingerbread and ice cream. It’s not new concept to us. In fact, gingerbread was the second flavor we ever put out on this here blog. This time I wanted to add in the component of lemon, you know, the classic lemon icing that tops gingerbread cookies. So I toiled with the idea of making a gingerbread flavored ice cream and adding lemon bars, but in the end, I was a sucker for a lemon ice cream with gingerbread croutons. Honestly, I thought you all would be too. So let’s get started with this week’s holiday flavor: Gingerbread with Lemon Cream…

In case you were wondering why we’re not making gingerbread cookies…we are looking for something dense that will hold up in our ice cream. We adapted this recipe from Smitten Kitchen for our ice cream, but the original produces a fantastic dense sticky gingerbread that is fantastic on it’s own. We start with Cardamom, Cloves, Cinnamon, Ginger and Nutmeg to give this cake intensity. The batter is poured into a Bundt pan and after baking is knocked out to cool. For the ice cream, we cube the gingerbread and bake again to form a crunchy layer on the outside that will hold up to the ice cream. The croutons are tossed in at the end of the churn.

Next, we mix in a handfull of freshly grated lemon zest to our organic sugarcane base before cooking. The base is cooked, the zest is steeped, and then strained before cooling and into the ice cream maker.

Gingerbread with Lemon Cream! It’s craft ice cream for the holidays and we want to share it with you…

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 12/20/13 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!

December 12, 2013

Hazelnut Mocha w/ Whiskey Caramel

Coffee, chocolate and hazelnuts are a familiar pairing in truffles and desserts over the holiday season, and this particular pairing reminded me of the boxes of chocolates my grandparents would give us as kids. With some luck, there was a nice little map to tell you what each piece was and allowed for bypassing the soon to be discarded selections, but often it was just a guessing game. There were the duds like petrified angel food, toothpaste mint or weirdberry liqueurs, the tooth pulling caramels, and then there were the truffles. The truffles were the true prizes, and the hazelnut was always my favorite. It was ultimately this memory that solidified my decision for this week’s flavor, so the object here was to create the my ideal holiday chocolate truffle – in this case with Espresso, Chocolate, Hazelnuts and of course, liquor.

If you know us, by now you know we don’t do anything the easy way. In this particular case it meant a double steep, starting with the hazelnuts.

The hazelnuts are first roasted to deepen their flavor and mellow out the bitterness (as well as remove a majority of their husks) and then ground into a meal to release the fats and allow the maximum surface area of the cream to steep with the flavor of the nut.

For the coffee infusion, we ground our favorite Peace Coffee Espresso blend and used a french press to infuse some of the cream.

Dark, fair trade cocoa was added directly to the base along with the hazelnut meal and coffee during the cooking process, and then steeped longer to draw out as much flavor from the ingredients as possible.

While that was all happening, a quick caramel sauce rolls on the stove and is finished at the very end with a splash of whiskey from none other than our pals at 2 Gingers . Sidenote: If you ever run into me, remind me and I’ll tell you the assuredly hilarious story of how camera straps in the kitchen and boiling sugar on the stove are a dangerous combination.

Once the base has had time to steep, its strained to clear out the hazelnut meal, and allowed to cool in preparation to be spun. The whiskey caramel is layered into the ice cream as its packed into the pint.

No longer do we need a map to find this flavor. Hazelnut Mocha with Whiskey Caramel: an espresso, dark cocoa and roasted hazelnut infused ice cream, decorated with ribbons of rich whiskey caramel.

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 12/13/13 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!

December 5, 2013

Pumpkin with Chipotle Praline Pepitas and Cajeta

This week we’ll continue with our flavors for the holidays, but this time with some influence from our neighbors to the South. Recently we honed in on a technique we’ve been working on for making our winter squash flavors that has produced favorable results on a consistant basis. This makes us very happy, and in turn will make you very happy when you taste these delicious creams. And since everyone has pumpkin pie on the brain this time of year, I decided why not take our squash victory for a ride in the form of pumpkin for this week’s flavor? In the process of thinking about flavor profiles, I couldn’t stop thinking about a caramel of some sort, and then it hit me…Cajeta! – AKA Mexican style goat milk caramel. In my mind, pumpkin and cajeta have comparable flavor profiles, but my thought was that the cajeta would compliment with it’s subtle cinnamon spice and contrast with the slightly more acidic properties from the goat milk. Done. And for a bit of texture I decided to double-up on the pumpkin and use it’s seeds; but not just plain seeds; pralined pepitas with chiotple powder for an extra kick. Which brings us to this week’s flavor: Pumpkin with Chipotle Praline Pepitas and Cajeta. Let’s get started…

We started with the classic pie pumkin squash grown right here in Minnesota. The pumpkin is cubed, tossed with a little butter, and placed in a oven to slow roast. We always talk about reducing water content in our ice cream, and that is a very important concept when we are actually flavoring our ice cream base with something natural, as we are here. This technique of slowly roasting the cubed pumpkins not only reduces the water content, but also allows some of the pumpkins starches to convert to sugar, thus the caramelization around the edges. The roasted pumkin is pureed in a blender with a little cream and added into our brown sugar ice cream base. The base is cooked, and then strained through a fine mesh strainer. The starches that remain in the roasted pumpkin, make for an ultra smooth ice cream. The base is chilled and ready for a churn.

Next we spread out raw pepitas on a sheet pan and roast them in oven. The roasted pepitas are cooled and placed on a parchment lined sheet pan.

For the praline, we bring granulated sugar and a small amount of water to a boil. The mixture is boiled down until the sugar caramelizes and an amber color is achieved. The chipotle powder is added and the caramelized liquid is poured over the roasted pepitas, salted and cooled. The praline is then broken up into pieces and added into the ice cream at the end of the churn.

Cajeta time! For this run, we used Poplar Hill goat milk from Scandia, MN. The milk is reduced slowly with sugar and a cinnamon stick for a few hours, while it transforms from a pale yellow to a rich golden brown. The caramel is strained through a fine mesh strainer and cooled. The cajeta is layered into the pints during packaging.

An ultra smooth pumpkin ice cream with crunchy spiced candied pumpkin seeds, all layered with a goat milk caramel! Bringing you holiday flavor with a Mexican twist.

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 12/6/13 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!