Brown Sugar – FROZBROZ

October 7, 2015

Apple Oat and Brown Sugar

Our journey down apple road continues this week. This time around, we will be using a newer technique, to us, to get the apples in the ice cream. A technique that allows us to create a creamy ice cream flavored with what ever fruit or vegetable we’re using, while eliminating any iciness due to moisture content. It’s something we’ve been playing around with a lot lately, and so far has been very successful. And to bring the creaminess up another level, I’m using rolled oats. I’ll explain how that works later, but for now, lets get this week’s flavor underway – Apple Oat and Brown Sugar

To begin, we start with regent apples from Hoch Orchard here in Minnesota. Everyone has their apple varieties of choice for eating and cooking. For me, the regent offers great apple flavor and is versatile for both good eating and cooking. Here, I want extract all of the apple flavor I can get, starting by breaking down the apples into two different parts – cider and pulp. First things first, we peel and core our apples. The apples are pureed in a blender until smooth. We then strain the puree through a fine mesh strainer set over a bowl. The cider is pushed through, and the solids are drained until the pulp is nearly dry. Getting as much of the moisture content out is important, unless you’re making a sorbet. Moisture is ice creams enemy.

The pressed pulp is spread thin on a sheet pan lined with a silpat baking mat. Baked at a low temperature to eliminate as much residual moisture. The baked apple pulp is reserved for the ice cream base.

Next, we use the reserved apple cider. With the addition of a very small amount of cane sugar, the cider is brought to a boil and reduced into a thick syrup. This syrup is ultra concentrated with apple flavor. The syrup is added into our brown sugar ice cream base, which I used for this flavor to bring out some deeper caramel tones. As I mentioned in my opening, I wanted to really bring on the creaminess with this flavor by infusing with rolled oats. The oats are added into the base before pasteurizing. During the cooking process, the oats release their starches into the base making for an ultra silky texture. The oats are strained out after the base is pasteurized and the reserved baked pulp is whisked in. After cooling, the base is ready to churn.

The road to apple ice cream stops here. A brown sugar ice cream made ultra creamy with an oat and apple infusion. Mission accomplished!

Apple Oat and Brown Sugar

Apple Prep:
4 Apples, Regent, peeled, quartered, and cored
2 teaspoons sugar

Ice Cream Base:
2 cups Heavy Cream
1 cup Milk
3/4 cup Brown Sugar
1/2 cup Rolled Oats
2 Eggs
3/4 teaspoon Sea salt
1/4 teaspoon Cinnamon
reserved apple syrup and paste

Instructions:

1. Prepare Apples: Using a blender or food processor, puree apples. Place a fine mesh strainer over a bowl, and pour apple puree into strainer. Using a spatula, press all of the liquid through the strainer until all that is remaining is paste. Reserve paste. Pour the apple liquid from the bowl into a medium sauce pan with 2 teaspoons of sugar. Over medium high reduce the liquid, stirring constantly so it doesn’t burn to the bottom of pan. Continue reduction, until a thick apple syrup forms. Remove from heat and reserve apple syrup.

2. Bake Apple Pastea: Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Spread apple paste in a thin layer onto a sheet pan lined with a silpat or other baking mat. Bake for 20-25 minutes until relatively dry. Remove from the oven and reserve for ice cream base.

3. Make ice cream base: Crack eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk fully. Add brown sugar and whisk. Add heavy cream, milk, salt, and cinnamon. Whisk until ingredients are combined. Add rolled oats and whisk to combine.

4. Cook/pasteurize ice cream base: Over medium heat, whisk or stir base continuously until temperature reaches 165-170 degrees. Remove from heat, and strain through a fine mesh strainer. Add both apple syrup and apple paste to strained ice cream base and whisk vigorously until combined. Cool ice cream base to room temperature (an ice bath will do this in about 15-20 minutes). Cover base, and chill in refrigerator overnight.

5. 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 10/9/15 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!

July 8, 2015

Dark and Stormy

Our Facebook fan flavor contest from a few weeks back provided a ton of great flavor ideas and we’ll probably add a few more before summer is over. This week we’re going to go back to the summer cocktail theme using a fan suggestion and visit another great summer drink featuring ginger ale, lime and rum – the Dark and Stormy. For the ice cream version, we made a ginger brown sugar ice cream with candied lime and dark rum syrup.

The most labor intensive part of making this flavor is making the candied lime – so we’ll start there. The lime rind is carefully separated and sliced – then boiled 3 times to remove the bitterness. Once that is done, the lime “zest” is simmered in a simple sugar syrup until tender, tossed with sugar and laid out on a sheetpan to dry.

Then comes the dark rum syrup. It starts with brown sugar and water, which is boiled into a syrup. The dark rum is added at the end once cool to prevent all of the alcohol from burning off. Rum is a sweet liqour that disappears in more sugar, so we want a little of the alcohol to stay in the syrup and round out the flavor.

Last but not least, the ice cream base. To serve as the ginger ale portion of the cocktail, we use brown sugar and fresh grated ginger. It makes for a nice slightly dark and gingery base to hold up the candied lime and rum syrup.

The candied limes are added in at the end of the churn and the rum syrup is swirled in as the ice cream is packed into it’s container.

The scoop is a light and airy brown sugar ginger ice cream studded with candied limes all embraced by a dark rum syrup swirl.

Dark and Stormy Ice Cream Recipe

(makes approx 1-1/2 quarts)

Ingredients:

For Ice Cream:
2C Heavy Cream
1C Milk (use any fat percentage you prefer – higher lends to a creamier base)
2 Eggs
3/4C Brown Sugar
1 Tablespoon of finely grated ginger
1/2 tsp salt

For Syrup:
1C Brown Sugar
1/2C Water
2 Tablespoons of Dark Rum

For Candied Lime:
3 Limes
1C Sugar + Extra for dusting
1C Water

Instructions:

1. Prepare the candied Lime (make 1 day ahead of time): Remove the peels from the limes. Using a sharp knife, carefully remove any thick white pith from lime peel. Cut peel into thin 2-inch-long strips. Place peel in pot and cover with water. Bring to boil and strain, repeat boiling and straining 3 times to remove bitterness from peel. Once boiling has been completed, bring 1 cup of water and 1 cup of sugar to boil. When sugar is dissolved, add strained lime peel and reduce to simmer; cook for approximately 30-45 minutes or until lime peel is tender. Once tender, strain lime peel and toss with sugar to coat, then spread out on sheet pan and let dry completely (will go faster in refrigerator – usually takes about 3-4 hours). Once lime peel is dry chop into small 1/4″ sized pieces and chill in refrigerator until you are ready to churn ice cream.

2. Prepare the syrup (make ahead of time and chill): Combine the brown sugar and water in a heavy bottom pot and place on burner over medium/high heat. Bring to boil and cook until temperature reaches 220 degrees farenheit (you’ll need a candy or high heat digital read thermometer). Watch closely because it can boil over lightning fast. Remove from heat. Let cool to room temperature and then add the rum and stir until incorporated. Chill further in refrigerator until you’re ready to make ice cream. It helps to test some of the syrup in the freezer to make sure it doesn’t get too hard or thick. If it does – simply add a bit of water or rum and heat until you can incorporate it all (or do it while it is still warm).

3. Prepare the ice cream: Crack eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk fully. Add grated ginger, brown sugar and salt and whisk again until all are fully incorporated. Place ice cream mix in heavy pot and cook over medium heat, stirring continuously. 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.

Churn ice cream base in ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions. Add in 1/2C candied lime in the last 5 minutes of the churning process. The rum syrup is swirled in to the ice cream as you pack it into the container. 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 7/10/15 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!

January 13, 2015

Toasted Brown Rice and Miso

This week’s flavor idea comes to you as so many do…pure inspiration from seeing great techniques from other peeps. This particular inspiration comes from the goddess of dessert at Momofuku Milk Bar, Christina Tossi. On an old episode of “Mind of a Chef,” Tossi toasts shiro miso paste to a dark almost burnt color, blends it with oil and smears it on a plate as an accompanied sauce to one of her desserts. First, it got me thinking about Asian flavors; and second, it got me thinking about the toasting process and how we can apply it to create deeper flavor. So let’s get started with this week’s flavor – Toasted Brown Rice and Miso.

After I saw the miso toasting process, my first thought was to incorporate it into the ice cream, but with what? I wanted deep, nutty flavors. Brown rice came to mind as a nutty, earthy flavor that my family eats often. But what if I toasted the brown rice first? It is a grain. Just like when barley gets toasted for beer. By now, my flavor concept has blossomed into one that I am diggin’ on, big time! For the toasted brown rice, it gets toasted in a pan, dry, over medium heat, tossing regularly until fragrant and golden brown. The rice is ground to a powder in a spice grinder and added to the ice cream base before cooking. Again, I wanted to deepen the flavors of our ice cream base for this flavor, so I substituted part of the cane sugar with brown sugar. As you might think, the brown sugar brings out more of those caramel nutty flavors. Now for the miso…

This is Japanese Shiro Miso AKA white miso AKA fermented soy beans. Also known as a sweet miso, it’s also going to add the majority of the saltiness to this flavor. The miso gets spread thin on a Silpat baking mat and baked low until golden brown in the middle and dark brown on the edges. This is nowhere near the toast level that Christina Tossi takes hers to, but it’s exactly what I’m looking for to finish this flavor. The toasted miso gets scraped off of the Silpat and goes into our ice cream base with the toasted rice powder before cooking. The ice cream base is pasteurized, the ingredients are steeped, and then strained through a fine mesh strainer. A touch more sea salt gets added and the base is cooled and ready to churn.

As a side note, I decided to take the strained/leftover rice powder, spread thin on a Silpat, and bake at 275 degrees for about an hour, I salted it, and it happened to be a nice crunchy crumble to serve on top.

Salty, sweet, umami. Inspiration makes this flavor all of that!

Toasted Brown Rice and Miso

2 Cups Heavy Cream
1 Cup Milk ((choose your percentage based on how fatty/creamy you’d like your ice cream to be – the higher percentage the creamier the ice cream)
2 Large Eggs
1/2 Cup Cane Sugar
1/4 Cup Brown Sugar, packed
1/4 Cup Brown Rice
2 Tablespoons White Miso Paste
1/4 teaspoon sea salt

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Spread miso paste on Silpat or other baking mat and bake until golden brown in middle with dark brown edges, approx. 12-15 minutes. Remove from the oven.

2. Make toasted brown rice powder: In a skillet or wok over medium high heat, add the rice and stir frequently. It’s ok if the pan is smoking. Some of the rice kernels will pop. This is ok too. Toast until deep golden brown. Cool. Grind in spice grinder.

3. Make ice cream base: Crack eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk fully. Add sugar and whisk. Add cream, milk and salt and and whisk until cream, sugar and eggs are combined. Add toasted rice powder and toasted miso. Whisk.

4. Cook/pasteurize ice cream base: Place ice cream base in a small pot and heat over medium heat, whisking or 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 1/16/15 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!

September 24, 2014

Ginger Snap Ground Cherry

A few weeks back we got a nice delivery of ground cherries from our friends at Bossy Acres. Ground cherries are one of those unique fruits that are around once a year and have a flavor like nothing else. For this very reason, we wanted to treat all of our CSI members to the experience of tasting them in ice cream. For our members, they will be receiving a pint of our Buttermilk Ground Cherry this month as part of their share, but per a request from my wife, I decided to use some of the extra ground cherries to make a new flavor for our weekly give-a-way – Ginger Snap Ground Cherry. Let’s get started…

Ginger snaps bring back memories of going to my grandmother’s house. She always had a bag in the cupboard and I always sat at the kitchen table eating ginger snaps and milk when I visited…which was often. It’s actually been about that long since I’ve eaten one, so when my wife suggested this flavor, I was happy to purchase that bag of nostalgia. Don’t knock me for buying these pre-made ginger snaps, because they’re exactly what Grams had in her cupboard, and if they were good enough for Grams, then they’re good enough for FrozBroz. The ginger snaps get broken up and tossed into the ice cream at the end of the churn.

Not just any ice cream base though. This is a brown sugar sweetened base with vanilla and touch of plain yogurt, giving it a caramel-esque quality and silky texture. Now for the jam…

This is the real deal…Bossy Acres ground cherries. If you’re not familiar, ground cherries are like a cross between a grape and a tomato. They grow in the same vine-like structure as a tomato plant and develop a similar exterior wrapper as a tomatillo. They’re called ground cherries, because when they are ripe, they fall off the plant to the ground. Their paper wrapper protects the fruit inside. And oh man, the fruit inside is soooooo tasty. But these little guys are a labor of love; not only does it require a lot of time for Bossy Acres to pick pounds and pounds of these things, but it takes us hours and hours to peel and clean pounds and pounds of these things. It’s something you won’t find any other ice cream companies working with. For the ice cream, we simply simmer down the ground cherries with sugar to preserve their flavor. It’s a simple jam that packs a lot of unique flavor. The jam gets layered into the ice cream before packaging.

This is it. Not just it. Ginger Snap Ground Cherry! A brown sugar vanilla ice cream layered with ground cherry jam and packed with ginger snap cookie crunch. It’s a request we couldn’t pass up.

Look good? 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 9/26/14 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!

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.