FROZBROZ – Page 7 – Minneapolis Craft Ice Cream

April 9, 2015

Beer Cheese

Recently, we worked on a beer ice cream for a special event, so naturally the thought was fresh in my mind. I pondered some beer and cheese pairings, but the obvious didn’t occur to me right away. I mean, we’re full blooded Wisconsin over here; cheddar in our veins, probably even beer, so when I finally got it, the pairing made complete sense. Let’s get started with this week’s flavor – Beer Cheese

For the beer portion of the ice cream, I wanted to use a local brew, duh. For this flavor I went with Bauhaus Brew Labs, Sky Five! Midwest Coast IPA. It’s a full flavored IPA, hoppy for sure, with some nice citrus notes. The beer gets reduced in a large pot over high heat until only a tablespoon or two are left. Our standard organic cane sugar ice cream base is added to the reduction and pasteurized.

I wanted a sharp cheddar for this flavor. Something that makes your lips pucker a little. So being from Wisconsin, I thought I should use a Wisconsin cheese. I decided on Hook’s 7 year aged sharp cheddar. Now getting the cheese into the ice cream is this week’s real challenge. Thankfully, is a secret to making this fool proof. Have you ever made mac and cheese from scratch and your cheese sauce turns out grainy? That’s what I wanted to avoid, and to do so, I am going to use a very small amount of sodium citrate. Sodium citrate is the sodium of citric acid and is more commonly used as a food additive for flavor or as a preservative. Here it is going to keep our cheese sauce from getting a grainy texture. A small amount of beer is brought to a simmer with the sodium citrate added in. The grated sharp cheddar is added, and stirred until the sauce comes together. This cheese sauce is added to the beer ice cream base, and after pasteurization, is cooled and ready to churn.

Whether you’re from Wisconsin or not, there’s no mistaking this ice cream when it hits your lips. Grab a pretzel and dig in!

Beer Cheese Ice Cream

2 12oz. Beers – Bauhaus Midwest Coast IPA
4 oz. Sharp Cheddar Cheese, shredded – Hook’s
1/2 teaspoon Sodium Citrate

2 Cups Heavy Cream
1 Cup Whole Milk
3/4 Cup Organic Cane Sugar
2 Large Eggs
1 teaspoon Sea Salt

Instructions:

1. Prepare the cheese: In a sauce pan, add the sodium citrate and cover the bottom of the pan with beer(~1/4 cup). Bring the beer to a simmer. Add grated cheese and whisk until incorporated. Remove from heat and set aside until ice cream base ready.

2. Beer reduction: Pour remaining beer into an 8 quart stock pot and bring to a rolling boil over high heat. Keep your eye on the reduction until foam subsides(may need to turn down heat intermittently to avoid boil over). Reduce beer to approximately 2 Tablespoons(it will be a syrup consistency). Remove from heat.

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

4. Cook/pasteurize ice cream base: Over medium heat, whisk or stir base continuously. Whisk in reserved beer cheese sauce between 110-140 degrees. 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). Strain base through a fine mesh strainer and put base in a clean container, cover, and chill in refrigerator overnight.

5. Churn ice cream base in ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions.

*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 3/27/15 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 2, 2015

Avocado Pistachio Chocolate Chip

Avocados and Pistachios are two of my all-time favorite things. The original intention for this flavor was going to focus solely on pistachios, but the more I pondered on how that would happen, the more all of these ingredients crept into the picture. I love that the green color give to the ice cream by the avocado plays some visual tricks. I loved that it looked like a pistachio ice cream. It could also be mint chocolate chip at a glance. Except it’s not.

The avocado is the first step of the ice cream and is the base of the flavor. Avocados lend a great subtle flavor to ice cream, and ironically, actually remind me of pistachio flavorwhen in ice cream. Maybe it’s just that green color. The avocados are pureed with cream and then mixed into our standard ice cream base. Also, if you don’t have a good stick blender, do yourself a favor and get one. You’ll use it a ton. It’s one of my favorite kitchen tools.

The pistachios are roasted and salted. I highly recommend buying the pistachio meats if you can – shelling enough pistachios for a batch of ice cream is not a task I would wish on most people. It helps to roast the pistachio meats quickly at a high temp to keep them from softening too much.

Finally the chocolate chips – are added in after the churn.

The combination of flavors is really unique – but works fantastically well. A rich
avocado ice cream, filled with roasted pistachios and chocolate chips.

Avocado Pistachio Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

(makes approx 1-1/2 quarts)

Ingredients:

1 Large avocado or 2 small
1/2C Pistachio nutmeants, roasted
1/2Tbsp of Butter
1/2C Chocolate Chips
2 Cups Heavy Cream
1 Cup Whole Milk (use any fat percentage you prefer – higher lends to a creamier base)
3/4C Sugar
2 Eggs
2 teaspoons salt

Instructions:

1. Prepare the pistachios: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Melt butter and Toss pistachios melted butter and spread on sheet pan. Generously sprinkle 1teaspoon of salt over the pistachios and place in oven for 5-8 minutes. Remove, set aside and let cool completely. Once cool, place pistachios in freezer bag or container and place in freezer until ready to go in ice cream.

2. Prepare the avocado ice cream: Puree avocado with the one cup of whole milk you will be using for the ice cream base and set aside.

Crack eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk fully. Add sugar and whisk until sugar and eggs are combined. Add cream, avocado puree, vanilla and salt and whisk again until all are fully incorporated.

Place ice cream base in a pot over medium heat, stirring continuously. Continue to 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) and then place in a container, cover, and chill in refrigerator overnight.

3. Churn ice cream base in ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions. Add pistachios and chocolate chips in last 5 minutes of the churning process. Freeze in a tightly covered container for at least 4 hours, preferably overnight if you can wait. Then, enjoy!

*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 4/3/15 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!

March 25, 2015

Chicken and Waffles

Seriously, we’re doing this. It has been a long time coming, but we finally stepped up and made this thing happen. Fried chicken, waffles, maple syrup, brown butter and ice cream? Hell yes! If you’ve ever ordered chicken and waffles at a restaurant, you couldn’t tell me that it all wouldn’t be better with a scoop of ice cream on top. And instead of putting the ice cream on top, this week we’re going to break it down and put it all in the ice cream. So come on, let’s do this Chicken and Waffles Frozbroz style.

First thing we’re going to work on is the ice cream base. I contemplated swirling maple syrup right into the ice cream for this one, but I wanted that maple flavor prevailing throughout, so I decided to use maple sugar as a sweetner for the base. Also, wanted to try and deepen the maple flavor with some caramel tones, so I went with a half and half mix of maple sugar and brown sugar. Question: would waffles be complete without butter? No, they wouldn’t. That’s the answer. Not just butter though, because plain butter tends to get lost in ice cream, so I’m going with it’s much more flavorful iteration; brown butter. This will also bring extra depth to the ice cream base adding a nutty component. Once the ice cream base is pasteurized, it’s cooled and ready to churn.

Next, we’re preppin the fried chicken. Well, fried chicken skin anyway. This has always been our hesitation with this flavor, for how it will hold up in the ice cream. I wanted an ultra crispy skin, and after a little research, I decided to use a technique used by chef Matthias Merges of Yusho in Chicago. These are skins from the chicken thigh. They’re laid out on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper and salted. Another piece of parchment is placed over the top, and then sandwiched with another sheet pan. Into the oven and drained on paper towels, these are incredibly crispy salted chicken skins. They’re amazing actually! We chop them up, and they go into the ice cream at the end of the churn. It turns out that they’re crispiness doesn’t hold up that well in the ice cream, but the skin is so fried, that the little bits almost dissolve into salty chicken flavored pockets within the ice cream. It’s a good thing, trust me.

Next, Belgium waffles! I recently got a waffle maker, so I have been making a lot of waffles for our family on the weekends. Belgium waffles do differ from a classic waffle. They’re more tender, airy and spongy all at the same time. To achieve that texture, the eggs are separated. Here’s the difference: the egg whites are beaten to stiff peaks and folded into the waffle mix. After a ride in the waffle maker, we have Belgium waffles. But that’s not all. They’re going to take another ride through the oven after chopping them up into croutons. This process will dry them out a little more, and allow them to hold up in the ice cream. The waffle croutons are tossed into the ice cream at the end of the churn along with the fried chicken skin.

Maple brown butter ice cream with bits of salty fried chicken skin and Belgium waffle croutons. Chicken and Waffles Frozbroz style!

Chicken and Waffle Ice Cream

Maple Brown Butter Ice Cream Base:
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup whole milk
2 large eggs
1/3 cup maple sugar
1/3 cup light brown sugar
2 Tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon sea salt

Fried Chicken Skin:
3 chicken skins, removed from thigh
Kosher salt

Belgium Waffle Croutons(This makes more waffles than you need):
2 cups AP Flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups milk
1/2 cup canola oil
2 eggs, separated
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions:

1. Prepare brown butter: Place butter in saute pan and simmer over high heat until brown. Remove immediately and reserve

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

3. Cook/pasteurize ice cream base: Over medium heat, whisk or stir base continuously. Whisk in reserved brown butter between 110-140 degrees. 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). Strain base through a fine mesh strainer and put base in a clean container, cover, and chill in refrigerator overnight.

4. Prepare crispy chicken skin: Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. On a parchment lined baking sheet, lay out chicken skin flat. Salt skins and cover with another piece of parchment paper. Sandwich with another sheet pan on top and place in the oven for 45-50 minutes rotating pan half way through baking. Remove from oven and drain skins on paper towels. On a cutting board, chop skins into tiny pieces and reserve until needed.

5. Prepare Belgium waffles: Whip egg whites to stiff peaks. In a separate bowl, sift dry ingredients together. In a 3rd bowl, mix oil, milk and egg yolks and vanilla. Stir wet ingredients into dry ingredients, and then fold in whipped egg whites. Prepare waffles according to waffle makers manufactures instructions.

6. Prepare waffle croutons: Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cut 1-2 waffles into 1/2 inch pieces. Place pieces on sheet pan and bake in oven for 10-15 minutes until crunchy on the outside. Cool and reserve until needed.

7. Churn ice cream base in ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions. At the end of churning, add in chopped chicken skin and waffle croutons. Place ice cream in airtight container and freeze.

*Yields approximately 2.5 pints

March 19, 2015

Sour Cream with Fresh Walnut Preserves

This week’s flavor was built around this fresh walnut preserve I found a few weeks ago made by Harvest Song. I stumbled across it hidden among a bunch of other specialty jams, sauces, etc. – and plucked it without hesitation. I’ve toyed with the idea of nut preserves before, but never actually found it in true form, and never made with fresh (green) whole nuts.

The walnuts are preserved while they are green and fresh, in a simple syrup made of sugar and lemon juice. Left with their shell on, the walnuts look a lot like olives in this state. They still taste like walnuts, but very sweet – with a flavor that tastes a lot like molasses. The texture is semi soft – most of the walnut crunch has faded but there is still enough there that they are not mushy or soggy. Hard to explain exactly, but reminded me of a nut candy. I had to make ice cream with them, and decided to pair them with a tangy sour cream ice cream base.

The walnuts were chopped into smaller pieces and then added back into their syrup in preparation for being added into the ice cream. They still look kind of like olives.

For the ice cream base I chose to use our sour cream base, which provides a foundational flavor very much resembling a traditional cheesecake. We’re a big fan of Westby sour cream – and for this recipe I typically use a light version to keep the ice cream from getting too rich. It’s hard to go wrong with these flavors.

The result is a rich and tangy sour cream ice cream laced with chunks of molasses tinged, freshly preserved walnuts.

Sour Cream with Fresh Preserved Walnut

Ingredients:

2 Cups Heavy Cream
1 Cup Light Sour Cream (I prefer light sour cream for this recipe)
3/4 Cup Sugar
2 Eggs
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 C Fresh Walnut Preserve, walnuts chopped and added back to syrup

Instructions for ice cream:

Crack eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk fully. Add sugar and whisk until sugar and eggs are combined. Add cream, sour cream and salt and whisk again until all are fully incorporated.

3. Churn ice cream base in ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions. Add walnut preserve to ice cream in last 5 minutes of the churning process. Freeze in a tightly covered container for at least 4 hours, preferably overnight if you can wait. Then, enjoy!

*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 3/20/15 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!

March 10, 2015

Irish Whiskey Caramel

Next week is St. Patrick’s Day, so in usual fashion, we thought we would make a celebratory ice cream flavor. We make a lot of caramel’s for swirling into our ice creams. A good amount of those caramels have booze in them. And of those boozy caramels, the majority have Irish whiskey in them; it’s a favorite. One thing that we don’t make a lot of is caramel ice cream though. So this week, that’s just what we’re going to do. In celebration of the upcoming holiday, we’re going to spike it with one of our favorites, 2 Gingers Irish Whiskey. This week’s flavor – Irish Whiskey Caramel

To start our ice cream, we are going to caramelize sugar (just as if we were going to make a caramel) to swirl into the ice cream. A small amount of water is added to the sugar and it’s brought to a boil. During the boiling process, the sugar begins to caramelize. When the sugar becomes a deep amber color, we add the cream.

After the cream, we add our milk, eggs, salt, and pasteurize the entire thing. The caramel ice cream base is cooled and a wee bit of whiskey is added; not to much, as too much alcohol will keep the ice cream from freezing properly. At this point, the ice cream is ready to churn, but first we are going to make a whiskey caramel to incorporate into the ice cream just before packaging. Because the caramel is so concentrated with sugar, we will be able to incorporate enough whiskey to give this flavor the boozy kick it needs. The caramel is made in the same style as our caramel ice cream, but instead of adding milk and eggs after the cream, we just add salt. Once cooled, whiskey is added. The caramel is swirled into the ice cream just before packaging.

A rich bite of caramel ice cream infused with 2 Gingers Irish Whiskey. Come celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with us!

Irish Whiskey Caramel

ice cream:
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup whole milk
3/4 cup sugar, white granulated
2 Tablespoons water
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon 2 Gingers Irish Whiskey

caramel:
1 cup sugar, white granulated
2 Tablespoons water
3/4-1 cup heavy cream
2-3 Tablespoons 2 Gingers Irish Whiskey

Instructions:

1. Prepare the ice cream base: In a heavy bottomed pan, with sides at least 4 inches high, add sugar and water and bring to a boil. As soon as the sugar turns an amber color, remove from heat immediately. Add heavy cream and whisk vigorously until incorporated. Set aside.

2. In a separate bowl, crack eggs into bowl and whisk fully. Add milk and salt, and whisk again until all are fully incorporated. Now, start whisking the caramel that you set aside, and slowly add the egg/milk mixture to the caramel as you whisk vigorously. Once incorporated, heat over medium heat, whisking or stirring continuously until temperature reaches 165 degrees. Remove from heat and cool to room temperature (an ice bath will do this in about 15-20 minutes). Stir in teaspoon of whiskey, place in a container, and cover and chill in refrigerator overnight.

3. Prepare the caramel: In a heavy bottomed pan, with sides at least 4 inches high, add sugar and water and bring to boil. Do NOT STIR at this point or the caramel will become grainy. As soon as the sugar turns an amber color, remove from heat immediately. Add heavy cream and whisk vigorously until incorporated. Stir in sea salt and cool. Once cool, stir in whiskey. Reserve for ice cream.

4. Churn ice cream base in ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions. Empty ice cream into an air tight container and pour some of the caramel over the top. Lightly stir the caramel into the ice cream. You can eat immediately as soft serve, but we would recommend freezing in a tightly covered container for at least 4 hours, preferably overnight if you can wait. The flavors will continue to develop and change over the next few days. Enjoy!

*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 3/13/15 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!