Caramel – Page 2

March 20, 2014

Oat Rum Raisin w/ Cinnamon Caramel

Ever since we originally created the Oat w/Maple Brown Sugar, we’ve been enamored with how silky ice cream gets from steeping with oats. Not to mention the incredible oat flavor. I wanted to use that base to create a flavor as a play on the oatmeal raisin cookie. It wasn’t until right at the end that the thought occurred to me – “I should probably soak these raisins in rum”. Man, am I glad I did. So now you have our play on both rum raisin and the oatmeal raisin cookie. Why not combine them?

First the base. These fine organic rolled oats are combined with our brown sugar ice cream base and put through a warm steeping process. During the steep, the starch is extracted from the oats much like what happens when you make oatmeal. That starch is what gives the oatmeal its sticky consistency – the more you cook the oats, the more of that starch comes out and the stickier the oatmeal gets. We like the starch. The starch in ice cream is a natural stabilizer and gives the ice cream an extra silky texture. The oats are strained out after the steep is complete.

The caramel is a straightforward sugar based caramel, infused with cinnamon when the cream is added at the end. The cream helps keep the caramel a light sauce instead of something something that pulls your teeth out of your head while you try to eat it.

Here comes the curveball. The original idea was to simply add raisins to the mix to complete the idea of the oatmeal raisin cookie. Instead they were soaked in rum overnight, as we’d do for a straight rum raisin. The raisins soak up the rum and turn into boozey candy that gets thrown into the ice cream right at the end of the churn.

This scoop a fantastic representation of the oatmeal raisin cookie with a cinnamon caramel holding it all together amongst a deluge of rum raisins.
Like to try some? 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. Winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 3/21/14 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!

Don’t forget about our pint sale,TONIGHT Thursday March 20, 2014. Click HERE for details.

February 26, 2014

Pine Nut with Rosemary Caramel

We often talk about how we come up with inspiration for flavors, so we won’t go there again today, but much of how a flavor is conceived begins with writing a concept down on paper. We have a list of concepts that may just be one flavor or a combination of flavors, but that list is a work in progress. Every time I look at that list, I might stare at one concept and come up with five more ideas from that one. Once a flavor is born, we often move on from the core concept and concentrate on developing others. This week, we’ve developed one of these concepts into a flavor that we thought would be worth taking from paper to the pint. Let’s get started with this week’s flavor – Pine nut with Rosemary Caramel.

Pine nuts have been on our list of conceptual ideas for a long time. We’ve contemplated many a combination, but there was something that struck me about using pine nuts and rosemary. Although rosemary is an herb from the mint family, it is characterized by it’s evergreen-esk needles and pine-needle-like flavor. At the very least, we’re giving you the illusion that this flavor is made from a nut and needle from the same family.

For the ice cream we start with raw pine nuts and toast them in the oven. The toasted pine nuts go into a blender with our brown sugar ice cream base and are pureed until smooth. During this process, the nuts release their oils into the ice cream base. The base is then cooked, steeped, and strained through a fine mesh strainer. The pine-nut-infused base is now ready to be churned.

Just like our ice cream, caramels can be infused with flavor as well. For the caramel, we start by infusing our cream with fresh rosemary by heating the cream, steeping, and straining out the rosemary. Next, we start our caramel by caramelizing our sugar in a sauce pan over high heat. Once the sugar has boiled and turned a deep amber color, we add our rosemary- infused cream. The caramel is seasoned with salt, cooled, and then layered into the pints during packaging.

Buttery pine-nut- infused ice cream layered with a rosemary-infused caramel. Another concept taken from paper to pint.

Like to try some? 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 2/28/14 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!

Don’t forget we have another pint sale coming up this Saturday, March 1st – see here for details on menu, and timing, etc.

January 15, 2014

Caramel with Salt Candied Pretzel and Chocolate Syrup

We may be halfway through the month of January, but this week we’re going back to the holidays. Everyone has their favorite holiday baked goods, and it seems as though every year there are more and more varieties on the cookie plate. This year, my sister-in-law turned me onto mini pretzels topped with melted down rolos. She pressed whole pecans into some of these snackers after the melt down, and others she left plain. However I ate it, I liked it. These flavors are not re-inventing the wheel, but they certainly make for irresistible snacking. And when I say irresistible, what I mean is, uncontrollable. And so, I wanted to deconstruct these little snackers and put them into our ice cream. Let’s get started with this week’s flavor – Caramel with Salt Candied Pretzel and Chocolate Syrup.

I decided that I wanted to make a caramel ice cream base, which is something that we’ve never executed before. Now seems like the perfect time, and making the caramel base is really no different than our process of making caramel itself. First, sugar and a very small amount of water are brought to a boil. The sugar is boiled until it starts to caramelize and turn a nice deep amber color. At this point, our cream is whisked in, and we add the caramel cream to the remaining portion of our ice cream base, which is heated through; emulating the pasteuriztion process. The result is a golden ice cream base ready for the churn.

Pretzels! Who doesn’t like pretzels? Ok, if you don’t like them, I can guarantee that you’re going to love these pretzels. They are an adaptation of Christina Tossi’s (of Momofuku Milk Bar fame) pretzel crunch. We are essentially making a pie crust or other type crumb to make these pretzels. The pretzels are broken up into small pieces, and baked with sugar, malted milk powder, salt and butter. Look out, cause these alone can make for a hella snackathon. They are tossed into the ice cream at the end of the churn.

And finally, our chocolate syrup. Here we make a simple syrup, by boiling organic cane sugar and water together, and then add our Valrhona cocoa powder. It’s the bomb chocolate syrup, and we layer it into the pints during packaging.

Bang! Caramel with Salt Candied Pretzel and Chocolate Syrup. It’s January, but we’re still serving up some holiday-inspired snackers frozbroz style.

Like to try some? 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 1/17/14 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!

Don’t forget, our first pint sale is coming up this Saturday, January 18th. Click here for details.

December 25, 2013

Manchego w/Zinfandel Caramel

Christmas is now in the rear view mirror as is most of 2013, which means New Years eve celebrations are almost upon us. New Years eve is synonymous with indulgence in good food, and good drinks, and like last year’s White Chocolate Pop Rocks w/ Champagne caramel, we wanted to do something apropos. Where I come from, no good party happens without a plate full of good cheese. Likewise, a plate full of good cheese pairs fantastically with good wine, and that brings us to this week’s flavor, Manchego w/ Zinfandel Caramel.

This flavor starts with my one of my favorite Spanish Manchego. Its a spanish cheese from the La Mancha region, and this particular selection is a raw milk manchego. Its buttery, with a nice salty bite and a great cheese-y flavor that pairs incredibly well with fruit and a bold red wine.

For the foundation of this flavor, the manchego went into the cream 2 ways- some was finely grated and melted into the base during the cooking process. More was coarsely grated and tossed in at the end to provide an extra oomph with the occasional bite of cheese.

The caramel begins as a standard sugar and water recipe, but is finished with a bit of cream to cool it first, and then the zinfandel right at the end to ensure the flavor doesn’t boil off.

The caramel is swirled into the ice cream as its packed into the pint. It is a wonderfully rich, manchego ice cream decorated with ribbons of zinfandel caramel.

Like to try some? 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 12/27/13 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!

December 12, 2013

Hazelnut Mocha w/ Whiskey Caramel

Coffee, chocolate and hazelnuts are a familiar pairing in truffles and desserts over the holiday season, and this particular pairing reminded me of the boxes of chocolates my grandparents would give us as kids. With some luck, there was a nice little map to tell you what each piece was and allowed for bypassing the soon to be discarded selections, but often it was just a guessing game. There were the duds like petrified angel food, toothpaste mint or weirdberry liqueurs, the tooth pulling caramels, and then there were the truffles. The truffles were the true prizes, and the hazelnut was always my favorite. It was ultimately this memory that solidified my decision for this week’s flavor, so the object here was to create the my ideal holiday chocolate truffle – in this case with Espresso, Chocolate, Hazelnuts and of course, liquor.

If you know us, by now you know we don’t do anything the easy way. In this particular case it meant a double steep, starting with the hazelnuts.

The hazelnuts are first roasted to deepen their flavor and mellow out the bitterness (as well as remove a majority of their husks) and then ground into a meal to release the fats and allow the maximum surface area of the cream to steep with the flavor of the nut.

For the coffee infusion, we ground our favorite Peace Coffee Espresso blend and used a french press to infuse some of the cream.

Dark, fair trade cocoa was added directly to the base along with the hazelnut meal and coffee during the cooking process, and then steeped longer to draw out as much flavor from the ingredients as possible.

While that was all happening, a quick caramel sauce rolls on the stove and is finished at the very end with a splash of whiskey from none other than our pals at 2 Gingers . Sidenote: If you ever run into me, remind me and I’ll tell you the assuredly hilarious story of how camera straps in the kitchen and boiling sugar on the stove are a dangerous combination.

Once the base has had time to steep, its strained to clear out the hazelnut meal, and allowed to cool in preparation to be spun. The whiskey caramel is layered into the ice cream as its packed into the pint.

No longer do we need a map to find this flavor. Hazelnut Mocha with Whiskey Caramel: an espresso, dark cocoa and roasted hazelnut infused ice cream, decorated with ribbons of rich whiskey 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 12/13/13 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!