Flavors – Page 18

March 20, 2014

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

March 12, 2014

Stout with Irish Coffee Syrup

St. Paddy’s Day party favor preparation is in full swing here at FrozBroz central headquarters. Last year it was our Irish Soda ice cream, and similarly, this year we are throwing down another beer flavored ice cream for the party. Let’s get started with this week’s flavor: Stout with Irish Coffee Syrup…

For this week’s flavor we decided to back to our roots; Wisconsin, to find a smooth, easy drinking stout to flavor our ice cream base. We chose Central Waters Brewing Satin Solitude Imperial Stout. It’s not a traditional Irish stout, but it possess those deep dark malty qualities that we were looking for. For the ice cream, we reduce the beer down to a syrup like consistency and add it into our organic cane sugar ice cream base. The ice cream is ready for the churn.

Next, Irish coffee syrup. Like many of our components, coffee syrup has been on the list of conceptual possibility list for some time now. It began with concept of a black cherry ice cream with a coffee syrup, but at that time, cherries weren’t in season so the idea got pushed aside. Recently, ideas surrounding St. Paddy’s Day came up including creating a flavor based on a coffee stout, and that’s when the coffee syrup came back into the fold. And since it’s the Irish holiday, why not throw in some Irish whiskey for good cheer! I mean come on, its St. Paddy’s day! It’s meant to be. For the Irish coffee syrup, we start by simmering down some Peace Coffee Yeti Coldpress with cane sugar. After our desired flavor and honey-esk consistency are achieved, we take it off the heat and spike it with another Minnesota original, 2 Gingers Irish Whiskey. The result is a nice balance of bitter coffee and sweet Irish whiskey. The syrup is layered into the pints during packaging.

Stout with Irish Coffee Syrup! It’s malty caramely stout ice cream with ribbons of sweet Irish coffee. Party preparations complete! It’s not just ice cream, its St. Paddy’s Day all churned up and frozen into a pint…of ice cream.

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 3/14/14 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!

This flavor will be offered along with a few others, in limited quantities, at our next pint sale, Thursday March 20, 2014. Click HERE for details.

March 6, 2014January 29, 2024

Black Sea Salt Malt

We talk a lot, maybe too much, about where our inspiration comes from – but its a huge part of what we do and is something we cherish and welcome. I often find the path and the journey is equally, and sometimes more rewarding than the end result and not just in making ice cream.

In the case of this flavor, the inspiration came from a book (and a friend). “And In Their Passing, A Darkness: The Salt Machine”, written by my pal Jeff Smieding, is a fantastic piece of fiction and one I highly recommend. Jeff had asked me to create a flavor for his upcoming book launch party and wondered if we might somehow involved salt since it is an overarching theme in his book. We had just procured some barley malt with the intention of developing a few malt themed flavors – and as fate would have it Jeff happens to brew his own beer once in awhile so we arrived at the genesis. Black Sea Salt Malt.

The foundation of the ice cream is our regular organic cane sugar base flavored with vanilla bean and a heap of this barley malt powder to give it that classic “malt” flavor.

Then comes the salt. For a long time, I’ve wanted to create a flavor with course salt as an add-in – to give crunchy bursts of salty goodness. I chose this course black sea salt because it dissolves more slowly than its counterparts and would provide the textural element that would last a bit longer. It also looks fantastic and fits the darkness element of Jeff’s book quite nicely.

The ice cream base is churned and the salt added in at the very last minute. As it churns for just a few seconds more – the smaller salt crystals dissolve into little rivers of black and grey swirled throughout the ice cream.

I am always motivated and excited by ice cream flavors that play tricks on the mind and the palate, both in color as well as with texture and flavor. This particular flavor looks almost like chocolate chip, but obviously tastes nothing like it.

The ice cream really is striking if I do say so myself. A malted vanilla base speckled with crystals of black sea salt that provide occasional explosions of salt among the sweetness.

Check out Jeff’s book here and if you feel so inclined, go enjoy a local brew and see Jeff read from his book in person at the book launch Wednesday March 19 at Harriet Brewing.
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 3/7/14 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!

February 26, 2014

Pine Nut with Rosemary Caramel

We often talk about how we come up with inspiration for flavors, so we won’t go there again today, but much of how a flavor is conceived begins with writing a concept down on paper. We have a list of concepts that may just be one flavor or a combination of flavors, but that list is a work in progress. Every time I look at that list, I might stare at one concept and come up with five more ideas from that one. Once a flavor is born, we often move on from the core concept and concentrate on developing others. This week, we’ve developed one of these concepts into a flavor that we thought would be worth taking from paper to the pint. Let’s get started with this week’s flavor – Pine nut with Rosemary Caramel.

Pine nuts have been on our list of conceptual ideas for a long time. We’ve contemplated many a combination, but there was something that struck me about using pine nuts and rosemary. Although rosemary is an herb from the mint family, it is characterized by it’s evergreen-esk needles and pine-needle-like flavor. At the very least, we’re giving you the illusion that this flavor is made from a nut and needle from the same family.

For the ice cream we start with raw pine nuts and toast them in the oven. The toasted pine nuts go into a blender with our brown sugar ice cream base and are pureed until smooth. During this process, the nuts release their oils into the ice cream base. The base is then cooked, steeped, and strained through a fine mesh strainer. The pine-nut-infused base is now ready to be churned.

Just like our ice cream, caramels can be infused with flavor as well. For the caramel, we start by infusing our cream with fresh rosemary by heating the cream, steeping, and straining out the rosemary. Next, we start our caramel by caramelizing our sugar in a sauce pan over high heat. Once the sugar has boiled and turned a deep amber color, we add our rosemary- infused cream. The caramel is seasoned with salt, cooled, and then layered into the pints during packaging.

Buttery pine-nut- infused ice cream layered with a rosemary-infused caramel. Another concept taken from paper to pint.

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. Two winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 2/28/14 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 we have another pint sale coming up this Saturday, March 1st – see here for details on menu, and timing, etc.

February 20, 2014

Turmeric Honey

When our favorite grocery store, Seward Co-op started carrying fresh turmeric root this winter, I jumped at the opportunity to create a flavor with it. Turmeric root has a more unique and pronounced flavor than the powder variety. Its flavor is somewhat ginger like, but still very much it’s own profile. It also has the ability to color almost anything it comes in contact with, neon yellow. Maybe even more poignant – Turmeric is believed to provide a plethora of health benefits that range from cancer and alzheimer’s prevention to detoxifying your liver, boosting your immune system and relieving arthritis. Considering all that, I suppose you could say this is our first homeopathic flavor? Won’t go that far. Either way, it made for an interesting journey and result.

To start, the turmeric root is peeled, minced and blended into our classic cane sugar base. It is steeped in the base to bring out the flavor and color.

You can see from left to right how the color of the ice cream transforms as the steeping process draws the color out of the root. Once the steeping process is complete, the base is strained to remove all of the turmeric root pieces and to provide a nice smooth consistency.

To add some dimension to the flavor, we used some of this local honey produced by our friend Britt. It has a fruity element to it which plays very nicely with the turmeric.

The base is churned and swirled with the honey at the end.

Results? A neon yellow colored Turmeric ice cream with fruity local Minneapolis honey that rounds out the sweetness and ends as one of the more unique flavor profiles of any ice cream we’ve created. It truly plays tricks on your brain as you try to divide the line between what you think it should taste like and what it actually does taste like. Its one of those flavors I keep going back for more because of that very fact. It’s just fun.

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. Two winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 2/21/14 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!

And don’t forget about our Spring CSI subscription – if you’re offered in reserving pints on a monthly basis between March and May 2014, go here for more info.

Finally – we have another pint sale coming up in two weeks on March 1st – see here for details on menu, and timing, etc.