FROZBROZ – Page 6 – Minneapolis Craft Ice Cream

May 13, 2015

Ginger Brown Butter Vanilla Bean

We haven’t done a vanilla centric flavor in awhile, so I took the opportunity this week to remedy that. While it’s true my sons are completely spoiled in their access to ice cream, the wide assortment of flavors we make are often complex and a little challenging for them. I wanted to tailor something more for them, especially with birthdays coming up – we HAD to have some kind of ice cream to eat with the cake. Hence, we arrived at this week’s flavor – very much a vanilla but tinted with just a twist as we do.

The process for this flavor is relatively simple – it’s all in the base.

First, the ginger is finely grated and added fresh to the cream base, along with fresh vanilla bean. Vanilla extract works fine in a pinch, but nothing compares to actual vanilla bean flavor. All of these flavors steep and infuse into the ice cream base during the cooking process – so it is important that they go in beforehand or their flavor will not be as intense.

A little bit of butter is browned in a pan, and whisked in once the ice cream base has reached a temp around 120 degrees Fahrenheit. If added in while the ice cream base is cold, it coagulates immediately and you get chunks of brown butter which you most likely don’t want. When added in while warm, it gets whisked into the base and emulsifies to become one. Harmonious brown butter flavor in an umami concert with ginger and vanilla bean and cream.

The scoop – a beautifully rich, ginger and brown butter tinted vanilla bean ice cream.

Ginger Brown Butter Vanilla Bean Ice Cream

(makes approx 1-1/2 quarts)

Ingredients:

2C Heavy Cream
1C Milk (use any fat percentage you prefer – higher lends to a creamier base)
2 Eggs
3/4C Sugar
1 Whole Vanilla bean
1Tablespoon of finely grated ginger
2Tablespoons of melted butter (browned)
1/2 tsp salt

Instructions:

Crack eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk fully. Add grated ginger, vanilla bean (scraped from pod) and sugar to eggs and whisk until all are combined well. Add cream,milk, salt and whisk again until all are fully incorporated. Note: You can add in the vanilla bean pod to steep during the cooking process for more vanilla flavor, but make sure to pull it out and discard before freezing the ice cream. Place ice cream mix in heavy pot and cook over medium heat, stirring continuously. Once mix reaches 115 degrees Fahrenheit, whisk in the melted browned butter until emulsified into the ice cream base. Continue to heat ice cream mixture until temperature reaches 165 degrees. Remove from heat. Cool the ice cream base to room temperature (an ice bath will do this in about 15-20 minutes). Once cool, place ice cream mix in a container, cover, and chill in refrigerator overnight.

3. Churn ice cream base in ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions. Freeze in a tightly covered container for at least 4 hours, preferably overnight if you can wait. Then, enjoy!

*Yields approximately 2.5 pints of ice cream.

If you’d rather not make it, 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 5/15/15 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally in Minneapolis. Prizes must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!

May 4, 2015

Malted Banana – Vegan

A few years back, we had a flavor request from a woman whose family had owned a diner in Richfield, MN many years ago. She reminisced about her favorite malt there, malted banana. So this week, malted banana makes it’s come back, except we’re going to give it a little twist. We’re going dairy free with this one. It’s been a while, and the thought of a malted banana ice cream wrapped up in a coconut milk base seemed too hard to pass up. So we give you this week’s flavor; Vegan Malted Banana

First, our malted vegan coconut milk base. For the malt, we use a dark malted barley powder that we picked up at our local home brew store. It gets blended with cane sugar, a touch of vanilla, and the Aroy-D coconut milk that we purchased at the best Asian market in the North, United Noodles! The Aroy-D has a nice clean coconut milk flavor with the proper fat content to make a rich vegan ice cream. For our coconut bases, we blend in a pinch of xanthan gum to help emulsify the fat molecules that often separate in coconut milk.

For the bananas, we’re using ripe organic bananas that we slice into 1/2 inch discs. They’re laid out on a sheet pan lined with a silpat and roasted in the oven for about 25 minutes. The roasting decreases water content and condenses flavor. We’re always trying to decrease water content of ingredient add-ins, as they can give the ice cream an unwanted icy texture. That’s a FrozBroz no no. After roasting, the bananas are pureed in a blender with some of the malted coconut base. The entire malted banana ice cream base is heated to 165 degrees, cooled, and is ready to churn.

The result is a rich vegan malted banana ice cream, that we hope, will someday peak nostalgia in one of our ice cream fans. Cheers Wendy!

Malted Banana – Vegan

2 Ripe Organic Bananas
2 14oz. cans coconut milk(preferably Aroy-D)
3/4 Cup Organic Cane Sugar
2 Tablespoons Dark Malt Powder(can be found at your local home brew shop)
3/4 teaspoon Sea Salt
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon xanthan gum

Instructions:

1. Roast Bananas: Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Cut bananas into 1/2 inch discs and place on sheet pan lined with a silicone baking mat or parchment paper. Roast for 20-25 minutes until lightly browned.

2. Empty 2 cans of coconut milk into a blender. Add roasted bananas. Before blending, mix xanthan gum, malt powder and salt together in a bowl. With blender running on high, puree bananas in coconut milk and add powder mix. Once fully blended, pour mix into medium sauce pan. Add sugar and vanilla extract to base.

3. Cook/pasteurize ice cream base: Heat base, stirring occasionally, until temperature reaches 165-170 degrees. Remove from heat and cool to room temperature (an ice bath will do this in about 15-20 minutes). Put base in a clean container, cover, and chill in refrigerator overnight.

4. Churn ice cream base in ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions. Store ice cream in air tight container in freezer until chow time.

*Yields approximately 2.5 pints

If you’d rather not make it, 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 5/8/15 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally in Minneapolis. Prizes must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!

April 30, 2015

Shoofly

It’s been awhile since we’ve done anything with molasses, and that just shouldn’t be. So this week’s flavor is a take on Shoofly pie – a molasses pie that is nothing short of incredible and one of my old favorites.

Instead of making a pie and just chopping it up, I chose to make a crunchy oat crumble that would represent the crumble you typically find on top of a shoofly pie. The versions of the pie I’ve had didn’t have any oat in the crumble but I chose to add them just to give some added flavor and crunch.

The crumble is a simple mix of brown sugar, oats, flour, a bit of salt and then cut with butter – kind of similar to granola but a bit more cookie like.

The mix is spread out on a sheetpan and baked at 350 for about 15 minutes or so until browned and done.

Once it’s cooled, it’s all broken up to be thrown into the ice cream after the churn.

The ice cream base itself is a simple molasses and brown sugar base. Sticky sweet molasses combined with a bit of brown sugar to balance it out a bit.

The scoop is a deep, rich molasses ice cream chock full of crunchy oat crumbles.

Shoofly Ice Cream Recipe

(makes approx 1-1/2 quarts)

Oat Crumble Ingredients:

1 cup unbleached flour
3/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup rolled oatmeal
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon of salt
4 ounces (1 stick) butter, cold, cut into pieces

Instructions for making the crumble (make ahead of time)

Combine 1 cup flour, 3/4 cup brown sugar, oatmeal and cinnamon in the bowl of a food processor, and pulse until blended. While the food processor is still running, add the butter gradually until the butter mixes in and resembles a coarse meal.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Press out the crumble mix on a greased or lined sheetpan into one thin layer. Place in oven and bake 15-20 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from oven once complete and let cool. Break into small pieces and set aside. You will have extra to enjoy however you’d like.

Ice Cream Ingredients

1/2 Cup blackstrap molasses
3/4 Cup of Sugar
2 Cups Heavy Cream
1 Cup Whole Milk (use any fat percentage you prefer – higher lends to a creamier base)
2 Eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 Cup of reserved crunchy oat crumble (recipe above)

Instructions:

Crack eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk fully. Add molasses and sugar to eggs and whisk until all are combined well. Add cream, salt and whisk again until all are fully incorporated. Place ice cream mix in heavy pot and cook over medium heat, stirring continuously. Heat mixture until temperature reaches 165 degrees. Remove from heat. Cool the ice cream base to room temperature (an ice bath will do this in about 15-20 minutes). Place strained ice cream mix in a container, cover, and chill in refrigerator overnight.

3. Churn ice cream base in ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions. Add cup of crunchy oat crumble in last 5 minutes of churn. Freeze in a tightly covered container for at least 4 hours, preferably overnight if you can wait. Then, enjoy!

*Yields approximately 2.5 pints of ice cream.

If you’d rather not make it, 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 5/1/15 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally in Minneapolis. Prizes must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!

April 22, 2015

Black Lager with Candied Pretzels

If you follow our weekly explorations, you know that a few weeks back we cranked out a flavor derived from the classic beer cheese soup. Working with beer in ice cream has been pretty enjoyable, so I decided to tackle another classic combination involving beer; beer and pretzels. Not just beer though. And not just pretzels. We bring you this week’s flavor – Black Lager with Candied Pretzels.

About a month ago, we were asked to make a New Belgium 1554 Black Lager ice cream for a beer and food pairing event sponsored by New Belgium Brewing. It turned out so well, that it just made sense to pair with the candied pretzels for this week’s flavor. Although not a local brew, the 1554’s dark malty caramel quality works extremely well in ice cream. For the ice cream, the beer gets reduced to nearly nothing. By the end of the reduction, a 12 ounce beer becomes about a tablespoon of syrup. After doing a side by side taste test using cane sugar in one base and brown sugar in the other, the 1554 with brown sugar crushed. Not surprising, the brown sugar helps accentuate the deep caramel notes in the beer. The beer reduction is added to our brown sugar ice cream base, and after cooking, is cooled, and then ready to churn.

Next, candied pretzels. BTW, candied pretzels…they’re the shizz. To make our candied pretzels we modified the “Pretzel Crunch” recipe from the great pastry chef, Christina Tosi, of Momofuku Milk Bar fame in NYC. With the pretzels, her recipe calls for malt powder, brown sugar, and butter. With the black lager ice cream, the flavors couldn’t be jive’n any better than that. The pretzels get crushed, and all ingredients are mixed together. Our version is going to get baked about twice as long as the original to achieve ultimate crunchy candied pretzel status. Either way you have it, these crunchers are worth their weight in gold. They’re broken up and added into the Black Lager ice cream at the end of the churn.

It’s a classic combination that meets present day ice cream. And by present day, I mean future. Rich caramelly black lager ice cream with crunchers of malty candied pretzels. It’s beer and pretzels at their best.

Black Lager with Candied Pretzels

2 12oz. Beers – New Belgium Black Lager
2 Cups Heavy Cream
1 Cup Whole Milk
3/4 Cup Light Brown Sugar
2 Large Eggs
1 teaspoon Sea Salt

1 cup pretzels, crushed into 1/4-1/2 inch pieces
4 Tablespoon Butter, Melted
3 Tablespoon Light Brown Sugar
2 Tablespoom Milk Powder
1 Tablespoon Cane Sugar
1 teaspoon Malt Powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

Instructions:

1. Beer Reduction: In a stock pot, add the beer and bring to a boil. Stirring occasionally, keep your eye on reduction until foam has died down. You may need to lower the heat occasionally to avoid boil over. Once foam has died down, beer can be reduced on high until beer is nearly gone and approximately 2-4 Tablespoons of syrup remain. Remove from heat and set aside until ice cream base ready.

2. Make ice cream base: Crack eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk fully. Add brown sugar and whisk. Add heavy cream, milk, and salt. Whisk until ingredients are combined. Pour into stock pot with beer reduction.

3. Cook/pasteurize ice cream base: Over medium heat, whisk or stir base continuously. Keep stirring continuously until temperature reaches 165-170 degrees. Remove from heat and cool to room temperature (an ice bath will do this in about 15-20 minutes). Put base in a clean container, cover, and chill in refrigerator overnight.

4. Prepare Candied Pretzels: Preheat oven to 275 degrees and line a baking sheet with silpat or parchment paper. Break up pretzels into small pieces and toss with other dry ingredients. Add melted butter. Toss until combined and spread out onto lined baking sheet. Bake for 30-40 minutes until dark golden brown. Remove from oven and allow to cool on baking sheet. Break up candied pretzel’s and freeze in airtight container until needed.

5. Churn ice cream base in ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions. Add 1/2-1 cup of candied pretzels to black lager ice cream at the end of the churn. Store ice cream in air tight container in freezer until chow time.

*Yields approximately 2.5 pints

If you’d rather not make it, 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 4/24/15 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally in Minneapolis. Prizes must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!

April 16, 2015

Toasted Grits with Maple Syrup

The original concept for this flavor began with the idea of somehow using polenta – which is very similar to grits but has subtle differences, such as the type of corn used..but that’s elaboration for another time. The fact is I had grits on hand, so out of convenience came a slight course deviation that led here. Why? Well, for one – I love breakfast themed ice cream flavors. I also love grits, and grits for breakfast so I ran with it. Plus, It’s maple syrup season, so it would only be right to have a flavor with some maple syrup in it. Truthfully, we use maple syrup and maple sugar pretty often, but we’ll happily take advantage of an excuse to use it more.

Now regular course ground grits uncooked don’t have a whole lot of flavor. So I chose to toast the grits just a bit in a hot pan to bring some more of the flavor to life.

At the same time, a basic ice cream base is prepared and heated on the stove. The idea is to have the the base heated to around 115 degrees or so, and to add the hot toasted grits into the warm cream to coax as much flavor out as possible. Once the base is finished cooking the grits are strained out with a fine mesh strainer. A little bit is reserved to add just a little crunch to the ice cream without being grainy.

Ah, the syrup. There is so much good maple syrup to choose from in the midwest. This particular flavor of ice cream was blessed with some of the fine goodness produced by the folks of Anderson’s Maple Syrup in Cumberland, WI. The maple magic is layered in as the ice cream is packed into the pint containers.

The finished product reminds me a bit of the cereal corn pops. It’s rich ice cream, infused with a toasted corn flavor, and wonderfully accented with a swirl of rich maple syrup.

Toasted Grits with Maple Syrup Ice Cream Recipe

(makes approx 1-1/2 quarts)

Ingredients:

1 Cup of course ground corn grits (polenta would also work)
1/2 Cup of Maple Syrup
2 Cups Heavy Cream
1 Cup Whole Milk (use any fat percentage you prefer – higher lends to a creamier base)
3/4 Cup of Sugar
2 Eggs
1 teaspoons salt

Instructions:

Crack eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk fully. Add sugar and whisk until sugar and eggs are combined. Add cream, salt and whisk again until all are fully incorporated. Place in pot in preparation to cook the base and get it started warming over medium heat on the stove, timed so it is starting to warm when the grits are finished toasting and still hot.

Add 1 cup of grits to heavy pan and heat over medium high, stirring frequently until they start to smoke and just begin to lightly brown. Add immediately to warm ice cream base.

Continue to cook ice cream base over medium heat, stirring continuously. Heat mixture until temperature reaches 165 degrees. Remove from heat. Cool the ice cream base to room temperature (an ice bath will do this in about 15-20 minutes). Strain out all cooked grits with a fine mesh strainer. You can toss the cooked grits, or if you’re creative find another use for them, (they taste pretty amazing on their own). Place strained ice cream mix in a container, cover, and chill in refrigerator overnight.

3. Churn ice cream base in ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions. Layer in maple syrup as you pack the ice cream into the container you will freeze it in. Freeze in a tightly covered container for at least 4 hours, preferably overnight if you can wait. Then, enjoy!

*Yields approximately 2.5 pints of ice cream.

If you’d rather not make it, 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 4/17/15 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally in Minneapolis. Prizes must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!