benny – Page 7 – FROZBROZ

September 4, 2014

Roasted Eggplant w/ Parmesan Shortbread

The end of summer is all about utilizing every last bit we can pull out of the earth. Might be via canning, or pickling, or simply making new dishes and finding new ways to eat things. The eggplant idea hit me literally just from seeing them at the farmers market and I thought, why not? Eggplant offer a subtle sweet flavor that I often use in cooking more as a dimensional/flavor component then as a feature item. That subtle sweetness works wonderfully in ice cream, no matter how strange it might sound. But for fun, let’s add some shortbread. Or maybe shortbread with a good parmesan cheese? Now we’re talking.

Lets start with the eggplant – for the ice cream, the eggplant is sliced, roasted off until nicely browned and blended into a smooth puree that is added to the ice cream base before the cooking process. Roasting helps eliminate the water from the eggplant and rounds out its flavor.

Next, the shortbread. We make a regular shortbread with butter, flour, fresh shredded parmesan and a little bit of sugar. It’s cut into cookies, baked off and then chopped up into small bits to add into the ice cream.

Blammo. It sounds a lot more weird than it really is. The roasted eggplant provides the ice cream with a nice undertone paired with an umami crunch from the parmesan shortbread. A great late summer harvest bite of ice cream.

You can be one of two lucky winners of 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. Two winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 9/5/14 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally. Prizes must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!

August 21, 2014

Sour Cream and Chive

I’ve been having a hard time containing my excitement for this week’s flavor for so many reasons.

We’ve talked for years about doing fully savory, non-sweet ice cream flavors but had never quite figured out exactly how to present them. I made the decision earlier this summer that we couldn’t wait anymore. It was time to take a turn down this country road and see what we would find.

The world opened up when we came to the conclusion that this “obviously-not-a dessert” flavored dessert was exactly that. Not a dessert. Still following me? Ice cream as a condiment: this was where we found our traction. This week’s flavor (and I’m sure there will be many like this to come) is meant to be served with or as an accent to something else – a snack, salad or main dish. I was instantly inspired by one of my favorite childhood (and adulthood) snacks – chips and dip. And, I’m in love with fresh summer chives. The thought of dipping a potato chip into a scoop of cold, fresh sour cream and chive ice cream on a hot summer day was one I immediately wanted to capture. Shall we??

IT all starts with fresh summer chives picked straight from my backyard. Since we aren’t making a sweet dessert ice cream, the big difference is in the amount (or lack thereof) of sugar. We still use the same cream and eggs approach, but the sugar is reduced by about 97%. It still serves a purpose, but only to round out the flavor. The idea was to make a very clean tasting cream base so the chives and acidity of the sour cream could star.

We follow the same process as we do for all of our other flavors at this point – the chives are minced and steeped in the cream base during the cooking process. The steep brings out the fresh chive flavor without cooking it too much.

Let me tell you – the end result is magical. It really is. The ice cream is very clean, not sweet at all – a hint of salt with a nice sour cream foundation and bright, fresh chive flavor. The real excitement came when I was able to serve it up to friends and witness their reactions. I scooped a couple of large scoops into a bowl and set it out with good quality potato chips for friends to dip in the super cold ice cream, just as I had imagined it. It was a hit, and one that I expect will have us venturing back into this territory soon – perhaps even offering some pints for sale at the shop in the near future. Ice Cream as a condiment – it’s happening!

You can be one of two lucky winners of 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. Two winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 8/15/14 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally. Prizes must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!

August 7, 2014

Sweet Corn with Cinnamon Syrup

We’ve been enjoying variations of sweet corn ice cream in the month of August for quite awhile, and have no plans on ending that tryst anytime soon. Its definitely a flavor of ice cream that has caught on in recent years and when you have a good source for sweet corn, it pairs well with almost anything. We happen to be huge fans of the sweet corn from Peter’s Pumpkins at the Midtown farmers market – their consistently perfectly sweet and ripe corn is hard to beat and as good raw as cooked. It also makes great ice cream.

This ultra sweet corn is pureed with the cream and steeped into the base during the cooking process.

For this week’s flavor, we’ve paired it with an old favorite – cinnamon syrup.

The flavor turned out to be something akin to fried ice cream, yet without any battering or frying. It’s summery, full of sweet corn flavor and accented wonderfully with a cinnamon syrup swirled throughout the pint.

You can be one of two lucky winners of 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. Two winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 8/8/14 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally. Prizes must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!

July 24, 2014

Blueberry Rhubarb

Que Andy Williams…”Its the most wonderful time….”

Seriously though, with ice cream most times of the year are pretty wonderful. But summer tops them all when we get our hands on local berries. We’re wrapping up an incredible and well utilized strawberry season and coming into the peak of blueberry season once again. Every year we usually create a few flavors based on each of these berries and we have so many ideas backlogged that it’s hard to decide what to do. We’ve been into combining fruits this summer and thanks to a 1947 New York court decision, Rhubarb is also considered a fruit. Either way, rhubarb and blueberry make a pretty incredible combination. Superlatives aside, lets get to the party. Rhuberry Blubarb!

Starting with this fresh rhubarb we procured from the Seward Co-op, and these incredibly flavorful blueberries fresh from Northfield, MN, we begin our journey.

Both the rhubarb and the blueberries are cooked down with sugar to eliminate the water content in them and keep them from making the ice cream icy. The blueberry jam is added straight into the cream for a deep blueberry ice cream flavor. The rhubarb is swirled in after the churn, leaving nice thick rivers of tart rhubarb jam that add a nice bright tartness to the bite.

The scoop: a rich blueberry ice cream, swirled with tart rhubarb jam. A perfect snapshot of mid-summer.

July 9, 2014

Strawberry Graham Cracker

A few weeks back we had a request for a flavor that featured graham crackers. We love and encourage flavor requests, and were happy to run with that idea and pair it with our annual outpouring of love for strawberries. As we often do during the few weeks strawberries are available, we can’t help ourselves from creating at least a few flavors with them. Maybe it’s pure selfishness on our part, but we can’t get enough of them.

For the graham cracker, we had to do a little processing first to make sure it holds up in the ice cream. So we combine with some butter, salt and mayyybe a little sugar and puree in a food processor until a new buttery dough forms.

The mix is then spread out on a sheet pan and baked off in the oven until nice and crunchy, then broken up in preparation to go into the ice cream.

The strawberries are cooked down and make into a jam, and then added straight into the ice cream before the churn.

The end result is a fresh strawberry ice cream full of buttery, crunchy chunks of graham cracker. For sale soon, at our kitchen.

In the meantime, you can be one of two lucky winners of 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. Two winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 7/11/14 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally. Prizes must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!