Cherries – FROZBROZ

August 6, 2015

Cherry Basil Yogurt Pretzel

I happened across these gorgeous dark Wisconsin cherries in the past week and snatched them up to pair with some of the fresh basil I have growing in the backyard. The very evening I bought the cherries I came home to my 2 year old son snacking on a handful of yogurt pretzels and knew right then and there that yogurt and pretzels would also have to be part of this combination. Serendipity and ice cream are a scheming pair.

The Cherries are the star of this show as they should be, and we begin with making them into a light jam. We’ve got this fantastic new method that really preserves the integrity of the fruit while keeping it from getting icy. It’s all about displacing the water content with sugar. Ah, the sweet wonder drug that we are slaves to. Sugar. With a nod to Oscar Wilde, we preach moderation in everything, including moderation.

Once the jam is made, the rest of this process is smooth sailing. The ice cream is a simple yogurt/cream base made with our favorite full fat yogurt to give it a nice tang.

This pretty garden fresh basil is minced and added in fresh at the end of the churn.

The pretzels are broken into smaller pieces and also added in at the end of the churn.

The end result is a rich yogurt basil ice cream swirled with fresh cherry jam and studded with pretzel chunks.

Cherry Basil Yogurt Pretzel Ice Cream Recipe

Cherry jam ingredients:
1 pint fresh cherries (about 1/2 pound)
1 Cup sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons lemon juice

Ice Cream ingredients:
1 Cup of plain yogurt
2 Cups of Heavy Cream
3/4 Cup of sugar
1 Cup of pre-made Cherry Jam
1 Tablespoon minced fresh basil
1/2 Cup pretzels (broken up)
1 teaspoon of salt

Instructions for the Jam: Place a plate in the freezer (this will come in handy in a bit). In a medium saucepan combine the cherries and lemon juice. Let stand for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in sugar. Bring mixture to a boil over high heat, stirring frequently. Cook and stir the mix until the bubbles subside and the jam appears slightly thickened, somewhere around 15 minutes. To test for doneness, spoon a small amount onto the chilled plate. If jam is gooey and wrinkles when you push your finger into it, it is done. This means it will not be icy in the cream (which you do not want). If not, cook and stir a little longer before testing again. Cover and chill completely until you are ready to make the ice cream.

Instructions for ice cream: Crack eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk fully. Add sugar whisk until fully combined. Add heavy cream, yogurt, and salt. Whisk again until all ingredients are fully blended.

Over medium heat, whisk or stir base continuously. Keep stirring continuously until temperature reaches 165-170 degrees. Remove from heat. Cool ice cream base 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.

5. Churn ice cream base in ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions. Add basil and pretzels in last 5 minutes of churning. Place ice cream is in freezer proof storage container. swirling in the cherry jam in layers as you do so. Place container in freezer and freeze ice cream for at least 3 hours, preferably overnight if you can wait.

*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 8/7/15 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!

August 22, 2014

Sour Cherry and Northern Lights Blue

This week is pretty plain and simple. You see, fresh tart/sour cherries aren’t something you come across very often, so when you do, you make ice cream with them. It crossed my mind to do a plain sour cherry ice cream, but you know? A few week’s back our family was doing some early evening power snacking; the kind where you put every kind of cheese, cracker, condiment, smoked fish, and bread out and go to town. Well, my favorite combo of the evening was a Cherry Black Ale jam from Serious Jam and blue cheese. And this is what brought me to this week’s flavor – Sour Cherry and Northern Lights Blue.

The Seward Coop, our neighborhood haunt, has been carrying a small supply of Barnard Farm tart cherries for a few weeks, and as a said, I couldn’t resist, as they are available once a year if you’re lucky. For the ice cream, we pit the cherries, chop ’em, and make a nice little jam with sugar and a splash of lemon juice. We will layer the jam into the ice cream at the end of the churn.

For the blue cheese portion of the ice cream I choose to use Northern Lights Blue. It’s made in Minnesota by Joe Sherman at Northern Lights Cheese. This blue is of excellent quality and of the Roquefort style of blue. It’s pungent and creamy. I wanted a blue that was full flavored, as the ice cream will tone down its pungentness. The cheese is crumbled and mixed into the ice cream before layering in the jam.

Plain and simple – Sour Cherry and Northern Lights Blue. An ice cream gem that you’ll only find here at FrozBroz!

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 8/29/14 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!

July 29, 2014

Coffee Cherry

We’re going back to an idea that spawned during the cold months of winter. It’s a flavor that has both summer and winter appeal. But in the end, the cherry wins. It’s that time of year when sweet cherries are plentiful, which makes it the perfect time to bring back last winter’s flavor idea – Coffee Cherry. Let’s get started…

These are Peace Coffee beans roasted right here in Minneapolis. In particular, we are using their Guatemalan Dark roast, which provides a bitter dark and oily grind that works very well for our coffee infusion. The beans are ground, steeped while we cook our base, and then strained out with a fine mesh strainer. The base is cooled and ready for churning.

Next, Cherries! Cherries from Barnard Farms in Michigan. These cherries are dark, sweet and robust, which will complement our coffee infused ice cream. Think bold flavors…that’s we have here. We clean and pit the cherries, then simmer them down with sugar and a bit of lemon juice. The cherries and their syrup are added into our coffee ice cream after it is churned.

Coffee Cherry ice cream…a cold weather idea to warm your summer soul. And for those supportive CSI full share members, this was part of your July CSI share. Cheers!

On the bright side, if you’re not a Full Share memeber, 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 8/1/14 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!

October 10, 2013

Buttermilk Biscuit with Ground Cherry Jam

For those of you who actually read our flavor explorations and how we go about our processes, you likely know that we coin a good ol’ frozbroz flavor brainstorming session as a “flavor storm”. During one of these recent flavor storming sessions, the topic of buttermilk buscuits came up. It came naturally, as we love playing around with breads, doughs, and of course, extra dairy in our ice cream. So with buttermilk buscuits on the brain, the beginning of a flavor was born. To top it off, we just recenetly broke down a batch of ground cherry jam with fresh ground cherries from the magnificant Bossy Acers. First of all, who doesn’t like buscuits and jam? It turned into a no brainer. I mean, ground cherry jam in ice cream pretty much makes for an automatic 5 stars, but add in the buttermilk buscuits – now we’re elevating this concept to an off the charts scenrio. Let’s get it started with this week’s flavor: Buttermilk Buscuit with Ground Cherry Jam.

We’ve never actually made buttermilk buscuits before, and I am sure that we have a lot to learn, but for first-timers, these buscuits couldn’t have turned out any better for our purposes. After doing a little recipe research, it seemed the proven method was to use a food processor for the job. We found out that the key to great buttermilk buscuits is agitating the dough as little as possible, and the processor allows for that by doing the mixing with just a few pulses. And that’s just what we did…first, pulsing the butter, flour, leveners, and salt. Next, pulsing in our organic buttermilk from Kalona, IA. Then, it’s a gentle pat down of the dough before cutting and baking off in the oven on a sheet pan. That’s it! Buttermilk buscuits! But actually, that’s not it. We’re not done with them yet.

We can’t just throw buscuits into our ice cream. We could, but that’s just not our style. We talk a lot about textures in our ice cream, and although the concept of soft buscuits has potential to be texturally pleasing, we made the decision to make the buscuits crunchy to add contrast. To do this, we cut our buscuits into croutons, toss with a little butter, and into the oven to become condensed, salty, buttermilk buscuit crunchers. Trust us, it was worth the extra effort. These crunchers are tossed in to our organic cane sugar base at the end of the churn.

And then…these! Beautiful fresh ground cherries from our local farmers, Bossy Acres. We’ve said it before, and we will most certainly say it again – it is of uttmost impotantance for all of us to support our local farmers. I’m not sure I could explain it any better than the ladies at Bossy Acres, so click HERE for a great explanation of what supporting local means for all of us – our community. Back to the ice cream…Ground Cherries! After the very laborious task of peeling off the outer wrapper of the ground cherries, we mash them, and cook them down with a bit of sugar until we have our jam – liquid gold. The ground cherry jam is layered into the pints during packagaing.

The result is our rich creamy ice cream packed with crunchy salted buttermilk buscuit croutons all layered with Minnesota-grown ground cherry jam. It’s just another flavor storm concept that’s been elevated to an off the charts scenerio.

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 10/11/13 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!