Ice Cream – Page 2

August 29, 2013

Peach with Peach Syrup

We’ve been on a bit of a vegetable ice cream kick lately, so we thought we would switch it up a little this week. It’s stone fruit season, and peaches at Weaver’s Country Store in Fall Creek, WI are ripe for the buying. We picked up a case and began pondering the possibilities. In the past, we’ve released a few other peach flavors on our blog including our Candied Peach Cobbler and Pistachio with Peach Marmalade. This week, we’re going purist, and set out to capture as much peach flavor as we could in a pint of our ice cream. Which brings us to this week’s flavor – Peach with Peach Syrup. This is how we do it…

Peaches! Michigan peaches from Weaver’s Country Store. First things first – we pit them and dice them up.

After meeting up with our good friend Heidi of Serious Jam, we had a discussion about how she keeps fruit from breaking down during the canning process. It so happens that Heidi’s techniques are quite suitable for ice cream making. For the peaches, she suggested we try a maceration process, involving soaking the peaches in sugar and lemon juice. The process pulls liquid out of the peaches, and all of the flavors between the peaches, lemon juice and peachy liquid in the bowl equilibrate. Beautiful! After the maceration, the peaches are strained and slow roasted in the oven until their flavors concentrate even more. Once cooled, the peaches are tossed into our plain organic sugar cane ice cream base at the end of the churn. But that is not all…we still have all of the reserved liquid left from straining the peaches after the maceration.

The liquid is placed in a sauce pan and reduced down to a syrup that will not turn icy in our ice cream once frozen. This golden peach syrup is layered into the pints during packaging.

Peachy Peachy! Smooth creamy peach syrup layered ice cream with chunkers of candied peaches. It’s FrozBroz pure peach goodness!

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 8/30/13 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!

August 15, 2013

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.

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.

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.

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!

August 1, 2013

Cream Cheese Blueberry with Candied Lemon

Many of our flavor concepts are first, based on seasonality; second, a specific technique; and of course we are generally striving to push the envelope with flavor pairings and techniques alike. And then there are concepts like this week where we just want to make whatever it is that we want to eat. I mean, we’re definitely staying true to seasonality, and that means most things, such as berries, are only around for so long. And this week, we’re talkin’ blueberries. Local blueberries Ripe blueberries that are the kind of blueberries dreams are made of…at least my dreams. And this is an ice cream flavor that I want to sit down and destroy…I craved it before I even attempted to make it. If you are into what I’m about to show you, then I’m pretty sure you’re going to have similar sentiments. Let’s get this on, with this weeks flavor – Cream Cheese Blueberry with Candied Lemon.

Cream Cheese, from Swiss Valley Cooperative in Luana, Iowa. This is a full flavored cream cheese with a nice tangy note to it. Also, extremely dense. Why cream cheese? This is my flavor jam, and I have all glutinous instincts in motion. It’s the Wisconsin in my blood. It’s that I know what this ice cream will taste like after I incorporate this block-o-cheese into the ice cream. So that’s what I’m doing here. The cream cheese is incorporated into our organic cane sugar base during the cooking process. Next, the whole reason designing this flavor ever came about…

Blueberries! Local blueberries from our very own Midtown Farmers. Before finding these blubes, I hadn’t decided how exactly I would get them into the ice cream. These were very ripe and sweet, almost past their prime, but perfect for juicing and making a syrup. And after a taste, I knew that was my approach. I smashed them with a potato masher and then brought to a simmer. Then, strained the juices through a fine mesh strainer. Next, sugar is added and the juices are simmered down. Blueberry syrup? Check. I layered it into the cream cheese ice cream during packaging.

Next I worked on making the candied lemon. I toiled with idea of making a cream cheese lemon ice cream base, but in the end, I wanted a little texture differentiation, and chewy candied lemon just seemed right. It is right. In preparation, the lemons are first peeled and julienned. The rind can be quite bitter, so I first blanch the rind in boiling water for a 20 seconds or so and then plunge into ice water to stop the cooking. I repeat this 3 times, each time changing out the water. Now that the bitter oils are removed, the rind is simmered in a simple syrup of sugar and water until translucent. The candied rind can be used as is, or I like to toss them in sugar, so they don’t all stick together. The candied lemon get tossed into the ice cream during the churn. Some of the candied lemon start to break down in the ice cream, creating little pockets of intense lemony goodness.

Are you into what I just showed you? – rich cream cheese ice cream studded with candied lemon and laced with an intense blueberry syrup. It’s my jam and it’s what I want to eat.

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 8/2/13 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!

July 25, 2013

Grilled Cheeseburger

Yes, really!

The whole idea of our weekly flavor was born from a challenge to ourselves, to concept and create on a regular basis, over a long term. This is how we keep our minds fresh, fuel our curiosity, make our breakthroughs and hone our skills. It also meant we would ultimately begin to challenge our own paletes, as well as our followers’ in the process. And because we’re willing to walk out on a limb here and there, we get a lot of funny suggestions for flavors. Sometimes we actually entertain them. Sometimes we don’t. In this case…

This flavor wasn’t created as a gimmick or as a joke, in fact, it was created out of pure desire to see if we could make something this far out, actually taste good. We realize that the public’s taste for Cheeseburger ice cream might be nil, but much of the point of these weekly releases are to give you an idea of our thought process when we concept, and ultimately create a flavor. Once in awhile our ideas fall flat, and those get left on the kitchen floor, never to be posted here or created at all for that matter. This one, in our opinion, did not.

It all started with a discussion on the consumption of shakes and malts while enjoying a burger and fries. Many of you willingly slurp down ice cream as a means to wash down a cheeseburger, even dipping fries in it. In some ways, the meal and the dessert are synonymous. So why wouldn’t this flavor work? We had to try.

The concept was narrowed down to a few important factors.

1. No physical meat in the final product

2. Somehow make the ice cream taste reminiscent of a grilled cheeseburger, while still allowing ice cream to be, well, ice cream

We agreed that steeping a burger would be the approach to get the flavorful fat and flavor to soak into the cream- the beef, the smoke, the char, and the cheese.

So, we had some cheeseburgers.

Obviously we start with quality ground beef, and Grass Run Farms is a good one. The burgers went on a hot charcoal grill and were topped with Wisconsin Cheddar. We ate some of the cheeseburgers. Then we took the two left over and kept them to steep in the ice cream base.

Being Wisconsin boys, we knew there had to be more cheese, so we tailored our ice cream base to accept more of this fine cheddar along with the grilled grass fed patties.

Don’t worry, we didn’t forget the bun. For this, we took our favorite New French Brioche Buns and baked them off into croutons with some help from our friends butter and salt. They went in at the end of the churn.

And here it is. A creamy, dense cheddar cheese ice cream steeped with charcoal grilled, grass fed beef patties and specked with brioche bun croutons. A sweet ice cream that ever so subtly reminds you of a cheeseburger.

Of course, you want to know – what did we think? It IS good. Honestly it wouldn’t be my first choice, and isn’t for eating in mass quantities – but its a blast to try and experience the brain tease.
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 7/25/13 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!

July 18, 2013

Oat with Mulberry Syrup

This week we’re taking on a lesser-known berry, but one that is found growing wild all over the city of Minneapolis – Mulberries. It’s one that is underutlized, but can channel deep rich berry flavor that usually isn’t associated with the species. We decided to pair the Mulberries with one of our favorite breakfast ice cream bases – oat, which brings us to this week’s flavor: Oat with Mulberry Syrup. Let’s get started!

Hopefully everyone knows what oats are, or at least look like. If not, take a good look…these are oats, and we are going to steep them in our ice cream base. And if you were to eat our ice cream steeped in oats, you’d love love love it. The oats are added while cooking our organic cane sugar base. During the process, they release their starches into the cream making for an ultra rich and velvety texture accompanied by their natural nuttiness. After steeping, the oats are strained out and the base is ready to churn.

Mulberries!! Thanks to our friend Christine for the major loot of Mulberries! Christine and her hubby own a vacant lot next door to their house in Uptown. There, Christine has created an extremely diverse and ambitious garden of both fruits and vegetables. Cucmbers, beans, tomatoes, watermelons, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, asparagus, apples, plums, and cherries just to name a few. Oh, and mulberries…and they are beauties. And they’re going in our ice cream in the form of mulberry syrup.

For the syrup, we first crush the berries using a potato masher and a hand-held pastry blender. After the juices are crushed out, the mulberries are strained out leaving only the juice. If you’ve never eaten a mulberry picked off of the tree, they could be described as a watered-down version of a blackberry. Because of their watered-down flavor, they are less saught after, but it is the exact reason why we first reduce the juice down by boiling. Once the juice has reduced, we add our organic cane sugar and reduce a bit more until a syrupy conistancy is achieved. The syrup is cooled and is ready to get layered into the pints during packaging.

It’s breakfast ice cream. Ultra creamy oat ice cream layered with intense mulberry syrup. Trying to put this lesser known berry on the map. Love, Frozbroz

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 7/19/13 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!