Buttermilk Biscuit with Ground Cherry Jam

For those of you who actually read our flavor explorations and how we go about our processes, you likely know that we coin a good ol’ frozbroz flavor brainstorming session as a  “flavor storm”. During one of these recent flavor storming sessions, the topic of buttermilk buscuits came up. It came naturally, as we love playing around with breads, doughs, and of course, extra dairy in our ice cream. So with buttermilk buscuits on the brain, the beginning of a flavor was born. To top it off, we just recenetly broke down a batch of ground cherry jam with fresh ground cherries from the magnificant Bossy Acers. First of all, who doesn’t like buscuits and jam? It turned into a no brainer. I mean, ground cherry jam in ice cream pretty much makes for an automatic 5 stars, but add in the buttermilk buscuits – now we’re elevating this concept to an off the charts scenrio. Let’s get it started with this week’s flavor: Buttermilk Buscuit with Ground Cherry Jam.

 

 

Buttermilk Buscuit DoughButtermilkButtermilk Buscuit Dough

 

 

 

 

 

Buttermilk Buscuit DoughButtermilk BuscuitsButtermilk Buscuits

 

 

 

 

 

We’ve never actually made buttermilk buscuits before, and I am sure that we have a lot to learn, but for first-timers, these buscuits couldn’t have turned out any better for our purposes. After doing a little recipe research, it seemed the proven method was to use a food processor for the job. We found out that the key to great buttermilk buscuits is agitating the dough as little as possible, and the processor allows for that by doing the mixing with just a few pulses. And that’s just what we did…first, pulsing the butter, flour, leveners, and salt. Next, pulsing in our organic buttermilk from Kalona, IA. Then, it’s a gentle pat down of the dough before cutting and baking off in the oven on a sheet pan. That’s it! Buttermilk buscuits! But actually, that’s not it. We’re not done with them yet.

 

 

 

Buttermilk Buscuit Croutons Before BakingButtermilk Buscuit Croutons

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We can’t just throw buscuits into our ice cream. We could, but that’s just not our style. We talk a lot about textures in our ice cream, and although the concept of soft buscuits has potential to be texturally pleasing, we made the decision to make the buscuits crunchy to add contrast. To do this, we cut our buscuits into croutons, toss with a little butter, and into the oven to become condensed, salty, buttermilk buscuit crunchers. Trust us, it was worth the extra effort. These crunchers are tossed in to our organic cane sugar base at the end of the churn.

 

 

 

Ground Cherries from @BossyAcresGround Cherries - PeeledGround Cherry Jam

 

 

 

 

 

And then…these!  Beautiful fresh ground cherries from our local farmers, Bossy Acres. We’ve said it before, and we will most certainly say it again – it is of uttmost impotantance for all of us to support our local farmers. I’m not sure I could explain it any better than the ladies at Bossy Acres, so click HERE for a great explanation of what supporting local means for all of us – our community. Back to the ice cream…Ground Cherries! After the very laborious task of peeling off the outer wrapper of the ground cherries, we mash them, and cook them down with a bit of sugar until we have our jam – liquid gold. The ground cherry jam is layered into the pints during packagaing.

 

 

Buttermilk Biscuit with Ground Cherry Jam

 

 

The result is our rich creamy ice cream packed with crunchy salted buttermilk buscuit croutons all layered with Minnesota-grown ground cherry jam. It’s just another flavor storm concept that’s been elevated to an off the charts scenerio.

 

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 10/11/13 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!

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Fennel Leaf

We’re knee deep in the bounty of summer’s harvest here in Minnesota, and considering that we only release one new flavor every week, it becomes difficult to decide what fruits or vegetables to utilize on a weekly basis with so many to choose from. And then sometimes, it just falls in your lap. Kind of like when your all time favorite farmers drop you a line asking if you might want to play around with some of their harvested wares. That’s just what happened. Two of the hardest working ladies in the business, AKA Bossy Acres, threw us a healthy dose of their fennel leaves. Seriously Bossy Acres, you two are the bomb digs for finding something new and exciting for us to work with. For those of you who have followed our journey here, you know that we’ve pretty much put the fennel plant through the ringer in our ice cream. A few years back we starting with our Almond Green Anise with Figs, then, our Fennel with Candied Orange, and finally, but until today, not last, our Fennel Pollen. This week, we set out to utilize the last portion of the fennel plant in our ice cream, so lets get started with this week’s flavor: Fennel Leaf.

 

 

Fennel Leaf

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bossy Acres fennel leaves! On my way to pick them up, my mind was racing with flavor ideas and parings. Picking them up, the first thing I noticed was how fragrant they were. The leaves were emitting this amazing sweet licorice aroma. I knew immediately that I had to try using them on their own. It was now plain and clear what brought our Bossy sisters to wonder if these leaves were something we could do something with.

 

 

Fennel Leaves and CreamStrained Fennel Leaf Base

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I wanted to try and get all of that sweet licorice flavor out of the leaves, so I tossed them in the blender with the cream and pureed. We then added the cream and pureed fennel leaves to our standard organic cane sugar ice cream base. This base was then cooked with the fennel leaves still in it and strained through a fine mesh seive. After a cool down, the fennel leaf base was ready for a churn.

 

 

Fennel Leaf

 

 

The results: a beautiful fennel flavor that is earthy, almost grassy tasting with a subtle hint of sweet licorice. Surprising to us, it turned out much less licoricey then we had anticipated. This flavor would make for a fantastic first course. Cheers to Bossy Acres for making this week’s FrozBroz flavor decision easy.

 

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 8/16/13 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!

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Sweet Pea Mint

Here in Minnesota Spring is in the air, which is a little weird since it has felt like Spring for about two months now. This new season brings us much anticipation of a whole range of new flavors that the Minnesota harvest will bring. And thanks to our pals over at Bossy Acres, the harvest has already begun. If you don’t know Bossy, it’s time you “liked” them and followed them on Facebook and Twitter. Karla and Elizabeth of Bossy Acres are growing local, sustainable, organic produce right here in the city of Minneapolis, along with a small two acre plot in Dayton, MN. Not only are they growing a wide range of vegetables, gourmet salad mixes, micro greens, herbs, and sprouts, they are truly great stewards of our community.

Thanks to their efforts at their urban ag site, we picked up some of these gorgeous pea shoots for this weeks flavor: Sweet Pea Mint

These beauties are no joke. They offer a ton of sweet pea flavor and a nice crunchy pop. The question is: how do I get that sweet pea flavor into the ice cream?

These shoots are gold, and knowing the time and effort Bossy put into growing these really had me thinking about the best way to go about things. This is the point where I could go off about how important it is to know where your food comes from, and starting a relationship with your local farmers, purveyors and businesses, but I will spare you for another day.

 

I decided to separate the stems from the leaves. The stems got tossed into the cream for a steeping session along with

some of the leaves from this lucious mint from the Wisconsin Growers Cooperative.

After steeping, the mixture gets strained of all solids.

 

 

At this point the base took on a light green hue. The flavors were all there, but I really wanted more of that sweet pea flavor to envelop the cream, so I took the separated fresh pea shoot leaves and processed them finely in the food processor.

The sweet pea leaves get added into the strained sweet pea mint cream base and then into the mixer for a churn.

The result…

 

 

 

 

FrozBroz Spring flavors comin atchya with Sweet Pea Mint ice cream! At first bite the sweet pea flavor hits hard followed by a blast of mint then blending together like two peas in a pod.

 

 

 

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 (4/27/2012) 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!

Would you like to see more of this kind of ice cream or be able to buy it online?  Then please, help us with our fundraiser on indiegogo, we only have 15 days left and need all the help we can get! And in exchange you’ll be one of the first to get our ice cream.  Visit our page at www.indiegogo.com/frozbroz

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