Small Batch Ice Cream – Page 16

January 19, 2012

Green Tea with Orange Shortbread Bars

Winter in Minnesota this year has brought us milder than usual temperatures, but this week is a different story. Winter is finally showing face and with the temperatures falling, what better way to celebrate than with some FrozBroz ice cream. This cold weather got us thinking about hot beverages, and in particular, hot tea. With all of the herbal teas out there, we decided to start with a classic in the ice cream world, and add a little orange twist.

This is Matcha Green Tea from the Tea Source in St. Paul. They provide the Twin Cities with the highest quality teas from around the world. Matcha is a Japanese ceremonial tea which has very complex vegetal qualities to it, which in our minds makes it great for ice cream.

The leaves of Matcha are ground into a silky powder.

We steep this Matcha powder in hot cream, and although we can not be sure, we believe that most other ice cream makers making green tea ice cream skip this step. Instead they incorporate the powder directly into the base. Remember those complex vegetal notes? Steeping brings those out BIG TIME!

And here’s the orange twist! Citrus is in season, so we decided to rock these orange shortbread bars, made with butter, flour, sugar, orange and orange zest. They offer a great balance to the herbalness of the tea ice cream. The acidity of these bars cuts right through.

Come celebrate Winter with us and have a little Green Tea with Orange Shortbread Bars.

How about a free pint? As we do every week, we’ll be giving away two pints of this flavor. Just leave a comment on our facebook page to be entered into the drawing. If you don’t have a facebook account, leave a comment right here on the blog. We’ll draw two winners on Friday afternoon (1/20/2012) at 4pm and will announce them on our facebook page. Our only conditions are you must be able to pick it up here in Minneapolis, and be willing to give us a little feedback that can be shared with everyone else. Good luck!

January 5, 2012

Grasshopper Chocolate Chunk

The holidays have passed, and so we move on to a new year filled with more lost promises of better eating. Well, maybe they’re not lost. Who ever said you needed to pound 15 Christmas cookies a day for 2 weeks straight? It’s just time to regulate our intake.

For most of us, there are still a ton of leftovers, and with leftovers, there are the great memories of last year. One of those great memories at our family’s house is grasshopper ice cream, and unless my brother overstayed his welcome, there will likely be a few more scoops left in the freeze.

So lets do it…FrozBroz style – Grasshopper Chocolate Chunk

What is grasshopper? As a cocktail, it is a mix of Creme de Menthe, Creme de Cacao and fresh cream shaken up on the rocks and then strained into a glass. So we’re pretty much making a cocktail ice cream. Bye bye new years resolution number 3.

This is Creme de Menthe. It is what makes a grasshopper a grasshopper…and green. It traditionally gets it’s color from the mint leaves used to flavor the liqueur. It will clean your sinuses and warm your heart. Along with the chocolate liqueur/Creme de Cacao, we add them both to our vanilla base at the end of churning.

Meet Theo. Theo is the only Organic Fair Trade Chocolate maker in the US. We love organic and we love Fair Trade. This 70% cacao bar is rich with deep chocolate flavor. It gets broken into chunks and added in with the liqueurs at the end of the churn.

Just another lost promise to keep the memories alive. Grasshopper Chocolate Chunk.

Like to win a free pint? Per the weekly drill, we’ll be giving away two pints of this flavor. Just leave a comment on our facebook page to be entered into the drawing. If you don’t have a facebook account, leave a comment right here on the blog. We’ll draw two winners on Friday afternoon (1/6/2012) at 4pm and will announce them on our facebook page. Our only conditions are you must be able to pick it up here in Minneapolis, and be willing to give us a little feedback that can be shared with everyone else. Good luck!

December 22, 2011

Sandbakkel with Grape Muscado Pink Peppercorn Jam

Sandbakkels are one of those Christmas cookie traditions that really embody my memory of the holidays growing up. Tables lined every wall in my grandmothers three season porch where boxes were filled with sugar cookies, spritz, rosettes, sandbakkels, krumkake and lefse among others. They are fundamentally made with the same ingredients, but the sandbakkels, after sitting in the cold air, had a substantial buttery crunch like none of the others. It is this and the reminiscence of our grandmothers cookies that bring us to another FrozBroz holiday flavor. Making sandbakkels requires some grandmotherly love.

That’s why we are going to get things started with Lard! These cookies wouldn’t be what they are without it. Cows make butter and pigs make lard. Fortunately for all of us, this recipe has BOTH. The lard gets creamed with butter, sugar, eggs, flour and vanilla.

There are a few spices that can really distinguish one holiday cookie from another. Nutmeg, cinnamon and allspice come to mind. Here we use Cardamom. These pods are cracked open and the seeds are ground in a spice grinder, then added to the dough.

Ok, for those of you who are unfamiliar with Sandbakkels, these are the molds that they are baked in. I mean, come on, these cookies are so cool that they require a special tin for each individual cookie.

The dough gets pressed into tins with one of the broz big chub thumbs, then baked off until golden brown.

Sandbakkels! These get tossed into a vanilla base with a little brown butter at the end of the churn. Now this flavor would be great on it’s own, but we just had to jam a little more holiday cheer into this one.

Our friend Heidi Skoog over at Serious Jam is cooking up small batches of jams and jellies like Strawberry Balsamic with Black Pepper, Blueberry Bourbon Sage and Raspberry Ruhbarb Pimms. For this weeks flavor, she made us a Grape Muscado Pink Peppercorn Jam that we drizzled in layers while packaging. This jam offers a gentle twist when paired with grandmothers Sandbakkels.

Not to mention, Serious Jam looks seriously awesome in our ice cream!

How about a free pint? Per the weekly drill, we’ll be giving away two pints of this flavor. Just leave a comment on our facebook page to be entered into the drawing. If you don’t have a facebook account, leave a comment right here on the blog. We’ll draw two winners on Friday afternoon (12/23/2011) at 4pm and will announce them on our facebook page. Our only conditions are you must be able to pick it up here in Minneapolis, and be willing to give us a little feedback that can be shared with everyone else. Good luck!

December 8, 2011

7 Layer Bar

Bars Anyone? Pretty sure if you’re attending a holiday gathering around here, you are going to be asked this question at least once. This is the Midwest, and now that I think about it, you’ll probably be asked this question at any gathering you make an appearance at. Bars are a tradition in these parts, and especially around the holidays. Some call them Magic Bars, but my mother always called them 7 Layer Bars – magic in your mouth.

Only thing is…we’re not making bars. You might contend that our graham cracker crust resembles a bar. After all, it is made with butter, brown sugar and graham crackers

Speaking of butter…Have we mentioned how much we love the butter from Hope Creamery? Located in Hope, MN, it’s one of the only independently owned creameries in the state churning out butter in small batches the old-fashioned way. Kind of like how we make our butterscotch to layer into our ice cream…

Butter and brown sugar incorporate and get simmered down until fully caramelized. We add a little cream, reduce, and then finish off with vanilla and salt.

Butterscotch made the old fashioned way.

Before we get the layering of butterscotch into the ice cream, lets talk chunkage. We use our cocoa truffles for few of our flavors. They’re made with 85% cocoa and cream, then dusted with cocoa powder. These get chopped up and added in at the end of the churning process along with…

Candied walnuts. These beauties are toasted and then candied with sweet and condensed milk and tossed with sea salt.

Let’s see, what else are we forgetting?

Coconut! After much thought, and the feedback of a few FrozBroz fans, we decided to leave out the coconut and use coconut milk in our ice cream base instead.

The result is a rich creamy coconut ice cream with chunks of graham cracker crust, cocoa truffles, candied walnuts laced with old fashioned butterscotch – 7 Layer Bar

How about a free pint for the holidays? As we do every week, we’ll be giving away two pints of this flavor. Just leave a comment on our facebook page to be entered into the drawing. If you don’t have a facebook account, leave a comment right here on the blog. We’ll draw two winners on Friday afternoon (12/9/2011) at 4pm and will announce them on our facebook page. Our only conditions are you must be able to pick it up here in Minneapolis, and be willing to give us a little feedback that can be shared with everyone else. Good luck!

November 10, 2011

German Chocolate Cake In Your Ice Cream

Every year I make a German chocolate cake for my mother-in-law’s birthday. It’s been her birthday cake tradition for as long as my wife can remember. Along with this cake, I’ve been making a coffee ice cream to accompany it, which pairs nicely with the espresso in the cake batter itself. I mean, I totally feel sorry for you if you don’t like the combination of coffee and chocolate. My mother in-law? She loves the coffee and chocolate combo, and so the tradition lives on.

Ironically, inspiration from this yearly tradition has inspired us to do something nontraditional. Instead of serving you cake and ice cream, we’re serving cake IN your ice cream – German chocolate cake in your ice cream that is.

Lets get this party started. Lets get this party started right. Chocolate/Coffee cake style.

Probably my favorite part about this cake is the inner filling. It starts with shaved coconut and toasted pecans. Add sugar, egg yolks, evaporated milk, and vanilla…

…this mixture is cooked on the range until it’s thick enough to coat the back of a spoon – aka nappé.

I could eat this for breakfast.

After slicing the cake in half, I spread filling on the bottom half.

Throw on the top…

Oh yeah! Ganache! How could we forget? This is the same stuff we use to make our cocoa truffles for our Peace Coffee Cocoa Truffle ice cream. Devine Fair Trade Chocolate whipped with hot cream until smooth and velvety.

Happy Birthday Babs!

Covered in ganache and ready to slice.

Two frozen slices of German chocolate cake ready to be packed with coffee ice cream. Another FrozBroz original – German Chocolate Cake In Your Ice Cream.

And as every week previous, you can win one of two available pints of this weeks flavor, just leave a comment on our facebook page to be entered into the drawing. If you don’t have a facebook account, leave a comment right here on the blog. We’ll draw two winners on Friday afternoon (11/10/2011) at 4pm and will announce them on our facebook page. Our only conditions are you must be able to pick it up here in Minneapolis, and be willing to give us a little feedback that can be shared with everyone else. Good luck!