Roasted Banana w/ Rum Mango Syrup

We’ve been on a tropical kick since January, and with the winter clinging to life with its cold dead hands, we’ve got no reason to stop now.   The basis of this flavor began with a beautiful ripe Kent mango that called my name at on a recent grocery run.

Mango

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I nabbed it up knowing I wanted to use it as an element for a flavor, hoping it would conjure a few ideas while it ripened just a bit further on the kitchen shelf.

Rum

 

 

Conjure it did, and as soon as I saw this little bottle of dark rum in the cabinet I knew it was going to be combined with the mango to make a syrup for the ice cream.

 

 

 

The only question remaining: what kind of ice cream this was going to swirl into?  My answer came when I noticed these two slightly overripe bananas hanging in the fruit basket.

Banana

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We used bananas a few weeks back for the first time, though we’ve been discussing them for well over a year. They make an amazing companion for rum and mangoes.

Roasted Banana

 

 

 

These two were roasted in a pan with some butter to caramelize the sugars and intensify the banana flavor.

 

 

 

The bananas were pureed with cream and steeped in the organic cane sugar ice cream base to infuse the roasty banana flavor through and through.

Rum Mango Syrup

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last but not least, this beautiful rum mango syrup is swirled into the pint as the ice cream is packed in.

IMG_9653

 

 

 

 

 
What we end up with is a silky smooth roasted banana ice cream, swirled with bright yellow ribbons of rum mango syrup.

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 4/5 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!

Facebook

Twitter

More...

Coconut Bar Banana Caramel

Ok, so it’s March here in Minnesota and this is where the winter starts really dragging arrss. Fortunately, at the end of January I was able to break up the monotony of winter on a family trip to Mexico. It was there

Mexican Coconut Barthat my sister-in-law purchased one of these coconut bars from the local grocery. I love coconut, so this bar was absolutely aaamaaazing! It’s ingredients: coconut, sweetened condensed milk, and sugar. Simple. Don’t ask what the pink stuff is on top, but the bar itself, is basically a bar version of a macaroon. The coconut is ground, so the texture ends up being chewy and much less course than a macaroon. It’s everything a coconut lover wants their coconut to be. And this is just the inspiration needed for this weeks flavor: Coconut Bar Banana Caramel. Lets do this…

 

 

Coconut

Sweet and Condensed MilkCoconut

 

 

 

 

 

In keeping with the simplicity of the original coconut bar, we stuck with plain unsweetened coconut and sweetened condensed milk. They both get pulverized in the food processor.

 

 

Coconut bars ready for baking

Lime Zest and Cane SugarLime Sugar Brûléed Coconut Bars

 

 

 

 

 

Next, the coconut mixture is pressed into a glass baking dish lined with parchment and baked at a low temperature. Once out of the oven, we puree lime zest and cane sugar in the food processor. The lime sugar is sprinkled over the top of the bars and brûléed with a torch. These bars? These ones are good. Really good! They get chopped up and added into our plain sugar cane ice cream base. Did I mention that we’re gonna add a banana caramel to this thing? Well, we are.

 

 

Frozen Ripe BananaBanana Slices

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Time to work on the banana caramel. Yes, the banana pictured above doesn’t look that appealing, but it has more flavor than any good-looking banana I’ve ever tasted. It’s actually an overly ripe banana that has been preserved in the freezer. I throw all of our over-ripe bananas in the freeze and they are fantastic for smoothies, banana bread, or any other baking recipe. The bananas get sliced, placed on parchment, and slowly roasted in a low heat oven.

 

 

Roasted BananasCaramel

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When they come out, we’re left with beautiful caramelized bananas that have lost much of their moisture content, but have retained all of their natural sugars and flavor. We make a traditional caramel by boiling granulated sugar. The caramel is finished with cream, and the bananas are added in after getting mashed, making for banana caramel ridiculousness. It’s just a lovely caramel. Banana caramel. Hot! It gets layered into the pints during packaging.

 

 

Coconut Bar Banana Caramel

 

 

 

And here it is! Coconut Bar Banana Caramel! Just enough to make you forget that it’s STILL winter here in Minnesota, and enough to have you start thinking about eating ice cream dripping down your face in the months to come.

 

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 3/15 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!

Facebook

Twitter

More...

Caramel Popcorn Candied Almond

Its been awhile since we’ve done a collaboration, so we’re excited to be back at it with none other than Twin Cities fantastic Stephanie Meyer.  When she isn’t running her spectacular blog Fresh Tart, she’s writing for Andrew Zimmern’s Kitchen Adventures on FoodandWine.com, contributing to Minneosta Monthly, and can generally be found somewhere around town, cooking, taking photos, writing, dining or  all of the above.  Let’s just say she’s scrubbed laziness from the Thesaurus.   Anyway, we met a few years back and our mutual passion for all things food quickly had us scheming on flavors.  Talks of collaboration on a flavor followed,  so I asked Steph to send us some of her current favorite flavors or ingredients as a catalyst for this collab.  An email returned to my inbox with the following:

Popcorn

Almonds

Caramel

Brown Butter

There were more potential flavors on this list, but these were the only ones that I saw.  Translation: Poppycock!  At least that’s how I first imagined it – popcorn (awesome) and nuts (even better) all covered in caramel and/or toffee (party).  We were going to  hearken back to one of our first flavors on this blog -Brown Butter Popcorn – and make a Poppycock version of it.  Time to make some ice cream.

First. The popcorn.  Popcorn is a mutual staple in Steph’s and our households and we’re both fans of flavoring it with brown butter.  It was an obvious choice as the main elements of the ice cream base.

Popcorn Pulverized popcorn

 

 

 

 

 

The first step in making this particular base is taking fresh pan popped pop corn, not microwave popcorn, or air popped, but popped old school in a pot with hot oil.  Why?  Because you get the most natural, classic popcorn flavor from the oil cooking the corn over heat.  Microwave popcorn is totally out of the question for many reasons, (no thanks butter “flavor”) and airpopped just won’t provide enough oomph.  Once it’s popped, we pulverized it in a blender and then mixed into the base and steeped to extract as much of the flavor into the cream as possible.

Brown Butter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While the base is heating/steeping, brown butter is whisked in.  The brown butter is such an incredible flavor on its own, and combined with salt makes the popped corn flavor much more prevalent, which is exactly what we want.

Caramel

 

 

 

 

Boiling sugar.

 

 

For this flavor we’re sticking with a classic caramel – with plenty of salt.

almonds, caramel

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We chose to candy the almonds whole, since the true prize of poppycock is the toffee coated nuts.  The caramel is swirled into the brown butter popcorn base and the nuts are peppered throughout.

Caramel Popcorn and Candied Almond

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The moral of the story?  Ice Cream is just as right for a cold, snowy night in March as it is a warm dusk in late June. Popcorn, Brown Butter, Almonds, Caramel mean victory.  This one is a champ.  A buttery, popcorn infused ice cream with heaps of whole, candied almonds and ribbons of salty, gooey caramel.

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 3/8 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!

Facebook

Twitter

More...

Rose with Cinnamon Honey

Happy Valentines Day!! This week we really wanna say thanks to all who continue to follow us and dig what we’re doing. We love you! Will you be our valentine? Be mine. Hug me. Cutie Pie. Lets Kiss. Be True. Sweetheart. Love Me. Seriously though, love you. And since we love you, and it’s Valentines Day and all, we thought we would give you roses on this special day. Not roses though. Rose ice cream. Rose ice cream with cinnamon honey. Let’s get started…

Rose PetalsRose Petals Steeping in Cream

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rose buddies! It’s not really the season to find fresh rose buds suitable for cooking with, so we’re using dried. Don’t worry sweetie pie, the flavor is all there. For our rose ice cream base, we use plain organic cane sugar, and steep the rose buds in the cream. The buddies get strained out, and the mix is ready for the churn.

 

 

 

Nordeast Nectars Raw Honey

Cinnamon

Cinnamon Honey

 

 

 

 

 

Next, we make our cinnamon honey. For this batch we’re using our last jar of local honey from Nordeast Nectars. We heat to thin out so that we can easily incorporate the cinnamon. Done! The cinnamon honey gets layered into the pints during packaging.

 

 

 

Rose with Cinnamon Honey

 

 

Happy Valentines Day! We made you rose ice cream layered with cinnamon honey. The rose flavor is floral and earthy while the cinnamon honey balances the bouquet with a touch of sweetness and spice. For real though, we love you! Hearts, Frozbroz

 

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 2/15 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!

 

Facebook

Twitter

More...

Meyer Lemon Ricotta Black Pepper

Since we’re on the citrus kick, I’ve dug up a flavor that I’ve contemplated for nearly a year.  Meyer lemons are one of my favorite citrus fruits and I wanted to make an ice cream that didn’t have  swirl or a syrup, but was straight up flavored with the fruit.  We’re no stranger to incorporating cheese in our ice creams either, but this marks the first time we’ve used Ricotta.  Its sweet mild flavor seemed like a nice way to balance the sweet and sour of the lemon, and black pepper is a way to finish it off with a little bite.

Meyer Lemon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Similar to last week’s flavor Lime with Macadamia and Ginger Caramel, we use zest from the lemon –

Meyer Lemon Zest

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

we also juiced the lemons and reduced them into a syrup to further intensify the lemon flavor once added to the cream.

Meyer Lemon Syrup

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then the cream base was made, using our organic cane sugar base along with this beautiful, tasty ricotta from the Seward Co-op

Ricotta

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All ingredients were blended, with fresh ground black pepper added in right before the churn

Black Pepper

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The end result is a light, yet rich lemon infused ice cream with an added creaminess from the Ricotta and a nice chirp of black pepper at the end

Meyer Lemon Ricotta Black Pepper

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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 2/8 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!

 

Facebook

Twitter

More...