Red Hot Candied Apple

Its apple season, and as we rifle through our apple recipe list it becomes a bigger challenge every year to create new apple flavors.  Especially considering we love love love some of our old ones.   This year it was time to tackle the candied apple.

The classic cinnamon candy flavor on a candied apple – one you might also know from red hots candy or sticks of gum is Ceylon cinnamon, which is not the cinnamon most of us are used to eating in baked goods and desserts.  That would be Cassia.  Some call Ceylon “true cinnamon” even though its probably usurped by Cassia in usage.  It’s easy to confuse the two, but their flavors could not be more different.  In order to make sure this flavor accurately and truly represents that cinnamon candy flavor, we utilized Ceylon in several forms.  You cannot discern the two by looking at them, but I’m going to include a picture of Ceylon cinnamon anyway. 🙂

Ceylon Cinnamon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First, the apples.  We chose these beauties from Hoch orchard, diced them up, tossed them with brown sugar, butter and powdered Ceylon, and roasted them in the oven to concentrate their flavor and squeeze out the water (as we do).  Then they were tossed with a little cane sugar at the end to provide a slight crunch.  Parents, if you are looking for a healthy, and easy snack/almost candy/dessert for your kids (or yourself) – just these roasted apples will do the trick.  But I digress, back to making ice cream.

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Roasted Apples

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next, the syrup.  We made our basic cinnamon syrup, but using Ceylon cinnamon instead of Cassia.  For fun and for some color, I dissolved some red hots into the mix.  You know, to make it legit. 

Red hots Red hot cinnamon syrup Red Hot Cinnamon Syrup

 

 

 

 

 

 

The cream is made with our regular cane sugar base and infused with more ceylon cinnamon powder.  The roasted apples are tossed in at the end of the churn, and the syrup is layered in as the ice cream is packed into the pint.  The result is an ice cream laced with levels of ceylon cinnamon invoking that “red hot” flavor, and tart roasty chunks of apple speckled throughout each bite.

Red Hot Candied Apple

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There you have it – Red Hot Candied Apple alongside our red hot new labels!

Red Hot Candied Apple

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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 10/4/13 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!

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Blueberry Black Pepper Cinnamon Stripe

This time of year, our blog starts to sound like a broken record, with constant talk about the seasonal berries, and the upcoming/just starting harvest season of pretty much everything else we can grow in the midwest. And why not?  For midwestern based, food obsessed fools like us, this is the greatest time of year.  One that many of us take for granted, only because much of what we can grow for a month or two is available year round in grocery stores.  But not too long ago, things like tomatoes, strawberries, sweet corn, watermelon…etc. were ONLY available at this time of the year, unless someone in your family was a studios canner.  Even then they weren’t as good as fresh.   When it all boils down to it, the excitement is part of us.  The value of the harvest is in our genes.  It means mother nature has cooperated for the most part and given us the gift of sustenance.   For our farmers, and family it meant surviving another year. It means summer is almost over and we should eat and drink and converse in the sunset and enjoy life in the moment just this once.  And all of that cheesy pillow talk aside, what it really means is second to none flavor.

So with my soliloquy over with, we’re doing another blueberry flavor this week.  Because we can, and because the goodness of fresh north-woods blueberries dictates that we should. What’s different is we’re doing something we’ve never done before.  A twofer.  A two in one.  Two kinds of ice cream that can be enjoyed separately or in harmony.  What we’ll call, the stripe.

Blueberries and cinnamon are two flavors that make something special happen when they’re together.  *cue the love songs* But when you have these prized local blueberries, sometimes you want to taste them on their own.  Get the true flavor.  Leave everything else out of it. So I chose to make two separate ice creams and pack them into the same pint, so you could do exactly that.

Bluberries

 

On a recent trip back from a weekend jaunt up north,  I lucked into a blueberry stand on the main drag of Spooner, Wi. The stand was from Melton’s Blues – a place I definitely plan on going back to – and would recommend visiting.  The blueberries were incredibly flavorful, and with 5 varieties to pick from, you really can’t go wrong.  Check them out on Facebook right here.

 

I pureed and reduced the blueberries into a simple jam, and added some black pepper to provide just a tiny little bite.

Blueberry JamBlueberry Jam

 

 

 

 

 

 

The reduction was added directly into the ice cream base, to make a full on blueberry ice cream.

 

Cinnamon

 

 

For the stripe, I made a simple cinnamon ice cream (a personal favorite)

 

 

 

To finish the job, both ice cream bases were churned simultaneously and alternately layered into the pints.

Blueberry Black Pepper Cinnamon Stripe

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The result is literally yin and yang – rich fresh blueberry ice cream on one side, cinnamon on the other,  with a tiny black pepper finish.
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 8/9/13 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!

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