benny – Page 21

March 5, 2012

Update: IndieGoGo Fundraising – THANK YOU!!!

THANK YOU FOR YOUR LOVE AND SUPPORT!

Thank you to EVERYONE who supported our Indiegogo fundraising campaign. We are speechless! Thanks to you, we raised $13,274! We really can’t thank you enough. In the end we were unable to reach our goal of raising $35,000, but we are forging ahead with this adventure knowing that so many of you are behind us. We are now carefully weighing our options, and will do our best to keep all of you up to date in our next steps to getting our ice cream to everyone who wants it. Again, from the bottom of our hearts, THANK YOU!

February 23, 2012

Chocolate-Peanut Butter with Medjool Dates and Pecans

Both of us “Broz” have relatives in Virginia and have spent time there enjoying various foods of the South. It certainly ranks high among our faves in regional cuisine, what with the smoke and fat and all.

Now, I’m not claiming that the origin of the peanut butter and walnut stuffed dates necessarily began in Virginia, but it seems logical to me, and was where I experienced them first – so I’m running with it.

I hated dates as a kid, but these indulgent handfuls of sugar quickly corrected my bad attitude. The idea of turning this into an ice cream flavor has lingered on our list for awhile, but when I recently picked up some Medjool dates from the co-op, it jumped right to the top.

To start: the peanut butter. Since we didn’t have a source for locally made peanut butter at our fingertips, we made it ourselves.

but first…..

Luckily, I happened to have some dark chocolate cream handy from making batch of our 3x Chocolate, and incorporated just enough into the peanut butter to darken the color and enhance the roasted flavor.

Peanut Butter, Froz style…

Then those precious Medjools….

The date that inspired this recipe is rolled in sugar once it’s been stuffed to give it an extra layer of crunch and added sweetness. For this incarnation, the gooey dates were diced first and then tossed around in granulated sugar to give that graininess some representation in the ice cream.

They sought each other out like velcro, so they had to be seperated and frozen before incorporating into the cream.

To finish, the base was blended with the chocolate peanut butter, and the pecans and dates were tossed in at the end.
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 (2/24/2012) 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!

February 14, 2012October 30, 2023

Heavy Table Silver Whisk “Best Purveyor” Winners!

UPDATE:

As shocking as it was to be nominated, it was even more so to WIN! We are incredibly flattered, humbled and stunned to be mentioned in the same company as the nominees and the winners of the other awards. Thank you all for the incredible support!

We got a major surprise this morning, we’ve been nominated for a Silver Whisk award from Heavy Table, for best purveyor.

To say we’re shocked is accurate, and flattered/honored is an understatement, especially considering the company we’re among. Congrats to Joia, Harriet Brewing, and Smude’s Sunflower oil – all far more deserving than we.

Click the image below to read the whole article.

February 9, 2012

Maple French Toast with Apricot

Sometimes the biggest treats are only that because of their timing.

As a kid, my mother’s call to dinner was always veiled in a bit of mystery. I rarely paid attention to what was being made, being much more consumed with horsing around with siblings and friends outside or earning the hard money on my after school paper route.

Hunger was a guarantee, and when presented the ever feared cabbage hotdish, a hunger that was guaranteed to linger. But once in awhile, when my mom had exhausted her pantry or simply needed to use something up, that pre-supper time famish was met with the greatest gift of all: breakfast.

Sometimes it was pancakes, others it was scrambled eggs and bacon – and if we hit the jackpot, it was french toast. It was a small victory that engraved itself in my head, and eating a plate of french toast now hearkens the joy of seeing that pile of egg bread on my dinner plate as a kid.

After earning my own french toast stripes with a picky eating three year old of my own, it was time to get this idea into some cream.

There’s something therapeutic about dredging bread in egg. Not sure what. Once everyone’s had their fill the rest (4-5 slices) of the french toast is diced up, baked off and transformed into crunchy little nuggets of breakfast goodness – ready to be bathed in fresh cream.

Ready….

For some added dimension we used these dried apricots from the Seward Co-Op, so sweet they could gag honey, minced into small pieces and tossed in as a dancing partner for our favorite breakfast bread.

Giant fruit candy.

To finish, the french toast croutons and minced apricots are tossed in to the base, and some of our friend maple syrup is added in right at the end to bring the flavor to fruition.

Wild Country Maple Syrup from Lutsen, MN.

Maple French Toast Apricot.

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 (2/10/2012) 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 26, 2012

Chicory Belgian Waffle

This flavor in particular was inspired by a good friend of ours, Chef Karla Schmitt who gave us our first opportunity to bring our ice cream (in its very early stages) to the public.

In one of our first meetings with Karla, she explained a dessert she hoped to serve revolving around Beignets and Chicory. The original idea was to serve the famous New Orleans pastry with a Chicory ice cream. Her fantastic idea led us down the path to discovering Chicory as one of our favorite ice cream flavors.

Chicory is better known for its close relatives more famous to most people as Belgian Endive, Radicchio – two favorites across the globe for salads, grilling, and braising. The Chicory we use for our ice cream is root chicory used most commonly when roasted and ground to be a coffee substitute.

In this case, we’ve found a French Chicory that has a great complex chicory flavor and is available as an extract – perfect for incorporating into our base.

It is coffee like in its flavor – but claims more of a bold cocoa and caramel flavor that is has a fantastic depth which works amazingly well for ice cream. For this particular idea, we took Karla’s dessert plate and combined it into a single ice cream, substituting Beignets for Belgian waffles.

Who doesn’t like waffles?

The trick with this flavor is similar to many of the former we’ve posted and developed – waffles in their original state are too frail and contain too much moisture to hold up in an ice cream base.

So as you’ve seen us do before – we dice the waffles into small cubes, and bake them off to provide a crunchy waffle like crouton that holds up and retains its texture while retaining the honest waffle flavor.

Add waffle bits, and that is that. A deeply complex coffee caramel ice cream studded with crunchy bits of Belgian waffle.

Time for breakfast!
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 (1/27/2012) 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!