FrozBroz – Page 10

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!

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!

January 19, 2012

Green Tea with Orange Shortbread Bars

Winter in Minnesota this year has brought us milder than usual temperatures, but this week is a different story. Winter is finally showing face and with the temperatures falling, what better way to celebrate than with some FrozBroz ice cream. This cold weather got us thinking about hot beverages, and in particular, hot tea. With all of the herbal teas out there, we decided to start with a classic in the ice cream world, and add a little orange twist.

This is Matcha Green Tea from the Tea Source in St. Paul. They provide the Twin Cities with the highest quality teas from around the world. Matcha is a Japanese ceremonial tea which has very complex vegetal qualities to it, which in our minds makes it great for ice cream.

The leaves of Matcha are ground into a silky powder.

We steep this Matcha powder in hot cream, and although we can not be sure, we believe that most other ice cream makers making green tea ice cream skip this step. Instead they incorporate the powder directly into the base. Remember those complex vegetal notes? Steeping brings those out BIG TIME!

And here’s the orange twist! Citrus is in season, so we decided to rock these orange shortbread bars, made with butter, flour, sugar, orange and orange zest. They offer a great balance to the herbalness of the tea ice cream. The acidity of these bars cuts right through.

Come celebrate Winter with us and have a little Green Tea with Orange Shortbread Bars.

How about a free pint? 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 (1/20/2012) 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 12, 2012

Cardamom Basmati Pistachio

Sometimes the path to finding a successful new flavor hits several dead ends before we find the way. Often, we’re on a path such as this because we are trying to replicate the flavor of something in ice cream, and that flavor has components that don’t work exactly right when their medium is changed.

In this case, the inspiration for the flavor came from the Indian rice pudding known as Kheer, and if you’ve ever been to an Indian restaurant, you’ve probably tried it. It seems so simple and pure, but the subtle flavors in it can be deep and complex – and any one of them can easily overwhelm the other. Finding the balance can be tricky.

The ever so slightly nutty flavor of the Basmati is hugely important to get the dessert to taste right, but it has no place in ice cream. In my first attempt at this, I thought perhaps the cooked and saturated rice would be o.k. in it’s frozen state. And while it wasn’t offensive, it just wasn’t right.

The trick in this case, was to steep the base with the basmati, long enough to infuse it with the flavor of the rice, without it being a component in the final product.

To achieve the flavor we wanted, the cream and rice go through a two stage steeping process over the course of 48 hours.

Interestingly enough, we also found out that too much Cardamom (which isn’t much at all) overwhelms everything and makes the cream taste like Fruit Loops. It was thoroughly confusing, and somewhat amusing. But totally wrong.

The best outcome of flavor included using a very small amount of Cardamom, and a tiny bit of Saffron. Or maybe just enough to make for a better picture than powdered Cardamom.

The highlight this cream is the pistachios, perhaps my favorite ice cream ingredient of all. In traditional Indian Kheer, pistachios are typically a garnish, mostly an afterthought.

An afterthought? Hardly.

The Pistachios are shelled and crushed into small pieces, and perforate the spice and cream in salty bliss.

‘Stachio.

The flavors come together to be very representative of Kheer, but steer the outcome in a direction that favors ice cream just a bit better. We’ve learned over the years that subtle flavors disappear in ice cream too easily, particularly because cold temperatures dull your ability to taste. Finding a way to intensify subtlety is totally ironic, and feels kind of misguided….. but it can pay off in spades. And it sure is fun.

How about a free pint? 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 (1/13/2012) 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!

December 29, 2011

Sour Cream Christmas Cookie

‘Tis the season of forming a solid leftover strategy. Turkey, mashed potatoes, pie, veggies, breads, desserts – you name it, and its probably stacked in a container somewhere in your fridge. Some find the form of a hotdish, others make for perfect sandwich toppings. No matter what, if you’re going to make the best of it, creativity is key.

So as it happens, this flavor just fell into our laps. These “cutout” Christmas cookies have been a staple in my family for ages. We’ve had them every year as far back as I can remember.

But they don’t end at Christmas. Once the holidays are over the cookies go on…and on. Since my Mom makes enough of these delicious cooks to feed a few families for several months, we thought we’d take some off her hands and put them to good use.

Now, this isn’t a super challenging flavor by any stretch of the imagination. But we did need to figure out a way to cut the extra sweetness of the already iced cookies in the sweet cream. So to counter it, we chose to use our sour cream base to provide a nice subtle hint of acidity to balance the extra sugar.

For the big finish, the cookies are crumbled into the base at the end. Its the holiday FrozBroz interpretation of Cookies and Cream.

And that’s that. Sometimes simplicity rules, and in this case its hard to lose.

Like to win a free pint? Per the weekly drill, 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 (12/30/2011) 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!