benny – Page 15

April 4, 2013

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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!

March 21, 2013

Irish Soda

OK fine – so we’re a little late to the St. Patrick’s Day parade, but this flavor was dreamt up in the spirit of the green day of drinking, and we’re going to post it anyway. We’ve been scheming beer flavors quite a bit over the last few months and released one of our first a few weeks back with the Brown Ale and Bacon Marmalade ice cream. The original plan for this pint of ice cream was an irish drink using a Guinness base, but the rest of the ingredients ended up changing at the last minute, a decision possibly influenced by a pint (or two) of Guinness.

While preparing a meal of Corned Beef and Cabbage for ourselves and the rest of the Froz family oe’r the weekend, we snacked on this wonderful Irish soda bread along with some Irish cheddar from the Seward Co-op. Actually, I should rephrase that for factual accuracy -“while Erik prepared a fantastic irish meal of Corned Beef and Cabbage for the rest of us”….anyway, back to the story.

We enjoyed the soda bread so much, we decided to lay waste to the orignal plans and make it a co-star of this week’s flavor with the Guinness base.

Like we’ve done many many times before, we cube the soda bread, toss it in butter and sugar, and bake it into crunchy little croutons to add the textural element to the ice cream. It’s like having an ice cream cone built in, except this ice cream cone is made of Irish Soda bread and tastes really good.

The base of the ice cream was none other than everyone’s favorite Irish stout. To flavor the ice cream we reduce the beer down with some sugar and create an extract of sorts, then mix it in to our standard ice cream base.

Magically delicious. A malty Guinness ice cream studded with crunchy bits of irish soda bread. We call it Irish Soda.
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 3/22 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!

March 7, 2013

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.

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.

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.

Boiling sugar.

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

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.

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!

February 21, 2013

Blood Orange Quark Ginger Shortbread

Its Blood Orange season which means for a very short time, they can be found in stores. They are a favorite of many when they show up around this time of the year. This is a flavor I’ve made before but have yet to post it on the blog. Now is as good as time as ever, right? The combination of the bright red orange with ice cream is hard to resist.

As you’ve seen us do for many other citrus flavors, the first step to this flavor involves juicing the blood oranges and reducing down with sugar to create a syrup to layer into the cream. Think this Minnesota made Blood Orange syrup might be good on pancakes or waffles, or some other dessert you have in mind? You might be seeing more from us in this department in the coming months.

Next, the ginger shortbread. Shortbread cookies are among my favorite, the richness and crunch is hard to beat. For a little extra kick, these are peppered with diced candied ginger then baked off and broken up in preparation for being mixed into the ice cream.

This was the first flavor we experimented with using Quark cheese, and it turned us on to a fantastic ingredient we’ll continue to use for many other flavors. It first appeared on our blog in the Cranberry Compote Quark + Toasted Walnuts. Its similar to cream cheese in texture, but a bit more tart and gives the ice cream an excellent cream flavor.

The quark is blended with the ice cream base, and the ginger shortbread is mixed into the cream during the churn. At the end, rich swirls of the blood orange syrup are layered in with the ice cream as it is packed into the pint. The end result is a cheesecake like ice cream, swirled with blood orange syrup and full of ginger shortbread crunch.

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 2/22 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!

February 7, 2013

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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!