coconut – FROZBROZ

October 4, 2015

Coconut Popcorn

As a first grader, my son takes turns with his classmates bringing in the daily snack. Last month he chose to bring popcorn, and instead of just popping it ourselves, we purchased a few bags from the store. We may have purchased a bag for ourselves too. The ingredients on the bag read: “popcorn, coconut oil, and salt”. Pure goodness here. The coconut popcorn combo was both unexpectedly and expectedly delicious all in the same. I’m very fond of the buttered version, but on the flip, coconut oil is pretty much amazing on anything, and that certainly proved to be true here. But after mentioning this deliciousness to some friends, it seems as though this combo has been around for awhile. But hey, I’m just happy I know about this deliciousness now. One thing I bet you all didn’t know though…popcorn and coconut are friggin amazing in ice cream. I know becuase that’s what I made this week’s flavor – Coconut Popcorn

Not an ice cream with chunkers of coconut though. I like having a creamy ice cream that is a full infusion of its components. Infusions make it fun trying to decipher and pin point the different tastes that you’re experiencing. Occasionally the infusion becomes a “sum of its parts”, meaning the components have basically mingled together to make one single flavor. Regardless, the infusion usual doesn’t disappoint. For this coconut infusion, I wanted to double down and really get a nice coconut flavor, so I used both toasted coconut and coconut oil. The coconut gets toasted in a 325 degree oven for about 10 minutes and then added into our cane sugar base during pasteurization. The coconut oil is blended into a small amount of ice cream base to emulsify the fats. It’s easiest to do the emulsification before adding the toasted coconut into the base.

Next, the popcorn. Over high heat, canola oil gets heated in a pan along with popcorn kernals. The pan is covered, shaken up once and awhile, and popped. After popping the corn, I need to condense it so I can get enough flavor into the cream. The popcorn gets chopped up in a blender or food processor. The popcorn’s volume is reduced by 50%. The ground popcorn is added into our ice cream base with toasted coconut. The base is pasteurized, and the toasted coconut and popcorn steep for 5-10 minutes before the base is strained through a fine mesh strainer. The base is given and final salting, is cooled, and is ready to churn.

Coconut popcorn says, “We make a great snack, but an even better ice cream”. So true coconut popcorn. So true.

Coconut Popcorn

Popcorn:
2 Tablespoons popcorn
2 teaspoons Canola oil

2 cups Heavy Cream
1 cup Milk
3/4 cup cane sugar
2 Eggs
1/2 cup Toasted coconut
2 Tablespoons Coconut oil, melted
1 teaspoon Sea salt

Instructions:

1. Prepare the popcorn: In a medium sized sauce pan, heat canola oil over high heat. When oil is shimmering, add popcorn and cover. shake sauce pan occasionally to keep the popcorn kernels moving around. Once popping, remove from heat when popping slows down. Pour popped corn into a blender. Pulse blender until popcorn is chopped into small pieces. Reserve 1 cup of blended popcorn for ice cream base.

2. Toast coconut: Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Place coconut on a sheet pan and toast in oven for approx. 10 minutes, or until golden brown on the edges.

3. Make ice cream base: Crack eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk fully. Add cane sugar and whisk. Add heavy cream, milk and sea salt. Whisk until ingredients are combined.

4. Cook/pasteurize ice cream base: Over medium heat, whisk or stir base continuously until temperature reaches 110-120 degrees. Remove from heat. Take one cup of the warmed ice cream base out and place in blender. With blender running, slowly add the melted coconut oil until emulsified. Pour emulsified mixture back into sauce pan with ice cream base.

Add toasted coconut and 1 cup of popcorn to the base. Resume whisking or stirring base continuously over medium heat until temperature reaches 165-170 degrees. Remove from heat, and allow to steep for 10 minutes. Strain base through a fine mesh strainer. Cool ice cream base to room temperature (an ice bath will do this in about 15-20 minutes). Cover base, and chill in refrigerator overnight.

5. Churn ice cream base in ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions. Store ice cream in air tight container in freezer until chow time.

*Yields approximately 2.5 pints

If you’d rather not make it, 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 11/6/15 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally in Minneapolis. Prizes must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!

September 17, 2015

Coconut Carrot Pistachio

Every year at the end of summer we’re using up as much of the harvest as we can handle. Carrots are a great late harvest prize and when they are fresh out of the ground their sweetness is incredible, especially when they are roasted and caramelized. This week’s flavor is a bit of an amalgamation of flavors drawn from carrot cake and the Indian dessert Carrot Halwa.

First the carrots. We like em’ roasty for our ice cream. The sugars amplify and the water is baked out and what is left is nothing short of magic.

Once the carrots are roasted and caramelized, they get pureed with a bit of milk and will be blended into the brown sugar ice cream base.

Then comes the coconut. We’ve found that coconut has a bigger impact on the flavor if it is toasted first and steeped in the ice cream base hot out of the oven.

Pistachios. We have a lot of love for many foods, but I could make flavors for months just with pistachios. Man are they good. Here we keep it simple, and crush the pistachios to go into the ice cream at the end of the churn.

The scoop is a silky smooth carrot coconut ice cream decorated with crunchy pistachios. Harvest time goodness.

Coconut Carrot Pistachio Ice Cream Recipe

Toasted Coconut:
1 cup of shaved coconut

Roasted Carrot Puree:
2-3 Carrots, medium, 1/4″ slices
1 Tablespoon Butter, melted
1/4 C milk

Ice Cream Base:
2 cups Heavy Cream
1/2 cup Milk
1/2 cup Brown Sugar
2 Eggs
3/4 teaspoon Sea salt
1C Carrot puree
1C Toasted Coconut
1/2 Cup Crushed pistachios

Instructions:

1. Make Roasted Carrot Puree: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Toss carrots with melted butter and roast for 15 minutes. Stir carrots and roast for 15 minutes more or until caramelized but not burnt. Remove from oven and puree with 1/4 C milk until smooth; reserve.

2. Make Toasted Coconut (Do this right before you make the ice cream base for best results): Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spread shaved coconut out on a sheet pan in one flat layer. Place in oven for approximately 10 minutes or until golden brown.

3. Make ice cream base: Crack eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk fully. Add brown sugar and whisk. Add heavy cream, milk, carrot puree and salt. Whisk until ingredients are combined. Add toasted coconut.

4. Cook/pasteurize ice cream base: Over medium heat, whisk or stir base continuously until temperature reaches 165-170 degrees. Remove from heat. Strain out toasted coconut. Cool ice cream base to room temperature (an ice bath will do this in about 15-20 minutes). Cover base, and chill in refrigerator overnight.

5. Churn ice cream base in ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions. Add pistachios in last 5 minutes of churn. Package ice cream in air tight storage container, then store in freezer until you’re ready to eat, preferably overnight if you can possibly wait.

*Yields approximately 2.5 pints

If you’d rather not make it, 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 9/18/15 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally in Minneapolis. Prizes must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!

May 15, 2014

Tamarind w/Salted Coconut Caramel

Tamarind is one of those sleeper ingredients and it is utilized as an ingredient in more things than you might think – from Worcestershire sauce to pickles to candy and desserts . Its got a sour, almost dull citrus flavor that isn’t all that appealing on its own – but when sweetened with sugar it comes to life. I’ve been passing by a basket of the pods in the grocery store for a few months now and finally got around to snatching some up and making ice cream with them. For this flavor I chose to pair the slightly sour and tropical tamarind with a coconut caramel.

The tamarind is not the easiest thing to work with. These pods have a hard shell that must be cracked off, and found inside is the pulp which surrounds seed pods. To get the flavor into cream, I made a syrup and steeped tamarind directly into the ice cream base as well.

While the base steeped with tamarind pods, we went to work on the coconut caramel. The first step was to toast coconut, which makes them more flavorful and heats the coconut oils for a more powerful steep. The toasted coconut is then steeped in cream, which will is then used to cool the caramel and make it into the sauce.

Sea salt is added once the caramel has formed up, which brings out the coconut flavor even more.

After the tamarind ice cream has churned, we swirl the coconut caramel in and pack it into the pint.

And that brings us to the scoop – a delightfully sour and rich tamarind ice cream, decorated with ribbons of salty toasted coconut steeped caramel.

Like to try some? You can be one of two lucky winners of this fantastic, 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 5/16/14 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!

May 1, 2014

Dark Chocolate Coconut Orange

We’ve only done a handful of coconut based, vegan/dairy free flavors, but we intend to do more – lots more. Everyone should be able to eat good ice cream, so we’re making it our duty to make sure the dairy free and vegan crowd get some too. Coconut ice cream presents some new challenges, but we’re committing ourselves to making sure we have flavors just as interesting and appealing in this category too – and making it our own goal to make sure we refine and perfect to ensure the ice cream is as good as it can possibly be.

As soon as we announced we were putting our first vegan/dairy free flavor up for sale, we had a immediate request last week for Dark Chocolate Coconut with a hint of Orange. Who are we not to oblige?

This flavor is pretty simple and the ingredient list fairly short. The foundation is nothing but coconut milk and organic cane sugar.

The orange flavor comes from zest of the orange, which steeps in the ice cream and gives it just a hint of orange flavor.

The final step is adding Valrhona cocoa powder in until a nice deep dark chocolate is achieved. And some sea salt to bring out the flavor even more.

The scoop is a luxurious dark chocolate with a whisper of orange – you can hardly tell it’s made with coconut milk. Vegan and dairy free.
Like to try some? You can be one of two lucky winners of this fantastic, 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 5/2/14 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!

February 6, 2014

Toasted Coconut Cherry Rum

Valentine’s day is on its way and we wanted to create a flavor that fit the bill. Last year we went the flower route with our Rose w/Cinnamon Honey flavor. This year however, we wanted something more tropical – something we like to do in the dead of a Minnesota winter. We chose to go the Toasted Coconut route because we’re a little obsessed with it right now and we wanted to pair it with something red – you know for valentines day. Originally we thought perhaps of doing a passion fruit syrup, but passion fruit is nearly impossible to come by right now, so we opted for Wisconsin Cherries. Well ok – the juice of Wisconsin Cherries but that’s as close as we could get. And to add an extra little zing, why not a twist of rum?

The process for this flavor was pretty straightforward. The base would be our regular ice cream base steeped with toasted coconut. The toasted coconut provides a much nicer coconut flavor, with more depth. The toasted coconut flavor really comes out in the ice cream with this method.

What brings it to the next level is this tart cherry juice from Door County, WI. We boiled the juice down to concentrate the cherry flavor and then added sugar and boiled more to create the syrup. The rum is added in at the end to ensure it doesn’t evaporate off in the cooking process.

Lastly, the syrup is swirled into the ice cream as it’s packed into the pint. The result is wonderfully tropical toasted coconut ice cream with notes of summer Wisconsin cherries and a bite of rum.

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 2/7/14 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!

And if you don’t win, this flavor WILL be available at our pint sale this Saturday, February 8th. Come pick up a pint of this or many others at our Valentines special pint sale.
Click here for details.