benny – Page 19

July 12, 2012

Deconstructed Blueberry Pie w/Charred Vanilla Bean

As a kid, my family would often spend a day of our summer vacation picking wild blueberries along a railroad track in northern Wisconsin, south of Hayward. We’d endure loads of mosquito bites and hoards of woodticks to earn a few gallon pails full of them, that would usually net a pie or two after we finished snacking. It was always one of my favorite pies, partially due to its rarity, but mostly because of the incredible sweetness and flavor combined with the dark blue hue of the macerated berries. I’ve mentioned these pie memories before – they are landmarks on my brain.

I hoped to get my hands on some of those very wild blueberries for this flavor, but I got the next best thing, which was these beauties from our recent fave Svihel farms from Foley, MN.

You might remember a few weeks ago when we released the Smoked Bourbon Vanilla Bean ice cream that we mentioned some discoveries while experimenting with vanilla beans on the grill. One of those discoveries was a charred version which we knew would give us a nice option so we preserved it for future use.

It paired wonderfully with the pie concept and made a nice dark fleck in the ice cream.

The blueberries were reduced with sugar, lemon, cinnamon and cardamom to create the “pie filling”.

Then there was the pie crust. Similar to the deconstructed pecan pie flavor we made last fall, the pie crust was baked off and broken up to go into the charred vanilla ice cream as an add in – floating throughout the pint.

The blueberry filling was layered into the pint to leave thick, ribbons of sticky blueberry jam.

It can be yours.. 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 (7/13/2012) at 4pm and will announce them on our facebook page (or email you if you’re comment resides here). Our only conditions are you must be able to pick it up here in Minneapolis, and agree to give us a little feedback that can be shared with everyone else. Good luck!

June 28, 2012

Salt Bagel with Cream Cheese and Honey

Our friends at Nordeast Nectars are beginning to harvest honey again and we’re going to do our damndest to get this liquid gold into our ice cream as much as possible. I’ve been wanting to do a salt bagel and cream cheese flavor for awhile, and when our beekeeper friends announced it was honey time, it seemed like it should also be honey, salt bagel and cream cheese ice cream time.

Angelic? That’s one way to describe the flavor of Nordeast Nectars honey.

Thanks to a quick survey of our followers, we were pointed to St. Paul Bagelry in our search of a good salt bagel. Good indeed. These circles were crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside just like they should be, with salt on the top AND the bottom. Bingo.

Salty.

We sliced and diced them, added a little butter and baked them a bit more to help them hold up in the ice cream.

Oh, and let’s not forget the cream cheese.

The cream cheese and bagels were mixed into the base, and the golden nectar was woven into the cream as it went into the pints.

There you have it. Salt bagel, cream cheese and honey ice cream. Extremely creamy. A little salty and some serious sweet.

Like to try some? 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 (6/29/2012) at 4pm and will announce them on our facebook page (or email you if you’re comment resides here). 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!

June 14, 2012January 29, 2024

Smoked Strawberry Preserves with Candied Walnuts and Bleu

Sometimes flavor inspiration comes from the places we’d least expect it. This one was inspired by a salad. Specifically a spinach, walnut, strawberry and bleu cheese salad with balsamic vinaigrette. I mentioned to my wife how much I liked this particular salad, and she said “you should make an ice cream flavor out of it”. So I did. Or at least, my best interpretation of it. Minus the spinach.

That’s as good as the story gets. Strawberry season is upon us, so it was perfect timing to put this puppy to the test.

Starting with these gorgeous strawberries from Svihel farms in Foley, MN, that we picked up at our neighborhood farmers market, the Midtown Farmer’s Market

I opted to bypass the balsamic altogether, and instead smoke the strawberries and make a preserve out of them to add a different dimension to the flavor.

Onto the smoker they went..

Once they were finished with their applewood smoke bath, they were cooked down into a preserve to be swirled into the ice cream.

Smoky. Strawberry-y.

Then, the Fairbault Bleu Cheese. If you follow us at all, you know we’re no strangers to cheese, and the cave aged Fairbault Dairy cheeses are spectacular. This particular one is relatively mild, semi soft, and rife with wonderful moldy veins. Perfect for ice cream.

The St. Pete’s Select went into the ice cream as small chips and chunks so it is almost a secret dimension to the flavor, but doesn’t overwhelm it.

Finally, walnuts. At first I thought I’d add them in as plain salted walnuts, but at the last minute I decided to candy them, so they went into the ice cream with a salted toffee coating which gives them a little extra crunch.

The finished ice cream is rippled with the smoky strawberry preserves, studded with crunchy, salted and candied walnuts, all offset by little bits of bleu cheese. It’s a wild ride.

Like to try some? 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 (6/15/2012) at 4pm and will announce them on our facebook page (or email you if you’re comment resides here). 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!

May 31, 2012

Smoked Bourbon Vanilla Bean

Since we’ve been on a bit of a spice kick with the Fennel Pollen and Baharat flavors in recent weeks, we thought we’d continue down the same path with a feature of the mainstay we’ve neglected until now -Vanilla. We use vanilla a lot, but haven’t given it a feature yet. Over the past few years we’ve kicked tons of different vanilla ideas around, but none have really stood out. That isn’t to say we don’t worship a classic vanilla bean or french vanilla flavor, but we wanted something a little more exciting.

We both spend a lot of time in front of the grill, regardless of the season, and have been doing it for far longer than we have been making ice cream together. You could say we’re a bit fanatical when it comes to cooking over a fire. So, when the idea of doing a smoked vanilla came up during a recent flavor meeting, it naturally resonated with both of us.

It starts with a quality vanilla bean. We have used many different forms of vanilla from various locations across the globe, but keep coming back to the Bourbon Vanilla bean for its dense vanilla flavor. Since we obviously don’t have a local source for it, we always search for a fair trade option.

Next comes the smoke. We explored and considered several different options for smoking the vanilla bean, including what wood to use, temperature, time, etc. We experimented with a few, and ended up using hickory for our wood, and smoking the vanilla bean with heat to dry it out. We learned a lot in the process and discovered some interesting variant paths both with different smoking wood and temperature, which we’ll certainly explore in future flavors.

Smokey the bean.

Once cooled, the whole beans were ground up to a fine powder, mixed and then steeped in the cream base before churning.

And that’s that. Smoked Bourbon Vanilla Bean. Would pair excellent with just about anything, especially if it was cooked over an open flame.

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 (6/1/2012) at 4pm and will announce them on our facebook page (or email you if you’re comment resides here). 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!

May 17, 2012

Avocado with Chipotle Honey Candied Pepitas

For me, the onset of warm summer weather always brings mexican food to mind, but then again, so does any other type of weather. Needless to say, as we brainstorm flavor ideas, mexican inspired ideas regularly find their way into the fold. We had been thinking about wanting to incorporate pepitas (pumpkin seeds) into a flavor, as well as avocado. We almost kicked ourselves when we realized, of course, these two made perfect sense together. Once it hit us, we were off to the races.

Avocados are a fruit we would kill to be able to have a local source for. Unfortunately our climate makes that mostly impossible, so instead we look to fair trade and organic sources for one of natures most perfect creations, that just happen to be hitting their peak season now.

In this recipe, we puree the raw avocado into the cream base. It’s richness translates very nicely into the cream, and it provides a subtle yet forward flavor that is recognizable but not overwhelming. The process brought about other ways such as roasting and steeping as a means to incorporate, but for now we stuck with something straight forward. Man these things are tasty.

The pepitas were a fun twist to add to this flavor and provided both a welcome crunch as well as a little heat, and salt.

Since we enjoy messing with the add-ins as much as the base, we decided to go whole-hog on the mexican route, and threw some chipotle into the mix- but not before they were roasted and salted well.

For the candy coating, we went with pureed chipotles and Ames Farm honey.

The roasted pepitas were tossed in the mix while hot and allowed to bake a bit more before cooling. The final result was just short of a brittle.

To finish, the candied chipotle honey pepitas were thrown in right at the end of the churn.

Avocado with Chipotle Honey Pepitas

Would you like to try some? 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 (5/18/2012) at 4pm and will announce them on our facebook page (or email you if you’re comment resides here). 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!