Port Black and Blueberry

Thanks to a fantastic season here in Minnesota, we are still rolling out new berry flavors. This week we’re combining the summer’s newest arrival, blackberries, with the steadily ripening blueberries. To boot, we’re throwing down a little port into the mix to really enhance the berry berriness of these berries.

 

Hoch Orchard Organic Blackberrries! Hoch, located in the hills of La Crescent, MN, is producing strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, cherries, apricots, plums and apples. You will find a variety of Hoch friuts and berries at your local Coop here in Minneapolis.

These blackberries are sweet, juicy and firm, the way blackberries are suppose to taste.

 

 

 

 

 

We were fortunate enough to score these gorgeous blueberries from a family friend’s garden back in our home state of Wisconsin. It didn’t take long to get them off the bush and into our ice cream.

 

 

The blackberries and blueberries get smashed up in a sauce pan, along with this port…

 

 

 

Graham Six Grapes port pairs perfectly with these dark berries. It’s bold, robust, and ripe with it’s own deep berry flavors.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They all get simmered down with brown sugar into thick jammy reduction that gets tossed right into the ice cream at the end of the churn. The result…

 

 

 

 

 

An intense black and blueberry ice cream with port.
FrozBroz Port Black and Blueberry ice cream!

 

 

It can be yours.. 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 (7/20/2012) 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 agree to give us a little feedback that can be shared with everyone else. Good luck!

 

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Orange with Raspberry Honey and Singing Hills Chevre

We are in full on berry season and this week it’s raspberries that are making their yearly ice cream debut. And since the berries are ripening fast, we need to get them while they’re hot and into the ice cream ASAPeronie. We’ve been talking to our friends down at Singing Hills Dairy about using some of their products in our ice cream and it seemed only fitting that this would be the week since chevre and raspberries make for a killer combo. Singing Hills Dairy, located in Nerstrand, MN, is a small 25 acre sustainable goat farm where Lynne Reeck and Kate Wall farm pasture raised goats. Lynne and Kate aren’t just goat farmers, they’re also cheesemakers, turning their high quality goat milk into a variety of plain and flavored chevres and fetas. Check them out, and please support them, Saturdays at the Mill City Farmers Market and Fulton Farmers Market and Sundays at the Kingfield Farmers Market. With that introduction, lets get to work on this week’s flavor: Orange with Raspberry Honey and Singing Hills Chevre.

 

 

 

We are lucky enough to have a few friends that sport quality raspberry patches right here in the city of Minneapolis. These beauties are sweet and plump and ready for your mouth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As with most fruit and berries, we need to find a way to reduce or displace their moisture content. This week we decided to roast these raskelberries, condensing their flavors into pure raspberry tartness…raspberry bombs!

 

 

 

 

 

If you’re one to actually read our blog posts, you’ll know how much we love our Nordeast Nectars honey…liquid gold. We just featured them in last weeks flavor, Salt Bagel with Cream Cheese and Honey

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Nordeast Nectars raw honey gets mixed together with our roasted raspberries and then layered into our pints during packaging.

 

 

 

 

 

Singing Hills Dairy plain Chevre! As we mentioned before, this is one of a few handfuls of artisanal goats milk cheeses they are making. Other chevres they offer include: Herbed, Garlic Pepper, Marinated, Honeyed, Cranberry Walnut, and Pesto Torte. This week we decided to use their plain, and wanted to try something that we’ve never tried before…

 

 

 

 

Using soft cheeses in the past, we’ve generally incorporated them into the ice cream base. We wanted to try and create pockets of cheese in the ice cream, so we start by scooping out small chunks of chevre onto a parchment lined sheet pan. Into the freezer so chunkersons would individually freeze. These frozen chunks get thrown into the ice cream at the end of the churn, and to our surprise they ended up staying relatively hard in the ice cream. They add a great texture contrast while offering the spectacularly clean tangy flavor of Singing Hills Chevre.

 

 

 

 

And lets not forget about our base flavor component: Orange! We add the zest of our oranges to our ice cream base which deepens the flavor pairing well with both the raspberries and the chevre.

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, it’s on! Berry season in full effect here at FrozBroz. You can see it all happening right here in our Orange with Raspberry Honey and Singing Hills Chevre.

 

 

 

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 (7/6/2012) 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!

 

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Salt Bagel with Cream Cheese and Honey

Our friends at Nordeast Nectars are beginning to harvest honey again and we’re going to do our damndest to get this liquid gold into our ice cream as much as possible.  I’ve been wanting to do a salt bagel and cream cheese flavor for awhile, and when our beekeeper friends announced it was honey time, it seemed like it should also be honey, salt bagel and cream cheese ice cream time.

 

 

 

Angelic? That’s one way to describe the flavor of Nordeast Nectars honey.

 

 

 

Thanks to a quick survey of our followers, we were pointed to St. Paul Bagelry in our search of a good salt bagel.  Good indeed.  These circles were crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside just like they should be, with salt on the top AND the bottom.  Bingo.

 

 

Salty.

 

 

 

 

We sliced and diced them, added a little butter and baked them a bit more to help them hold up in the ice cream.

 

 

 

Oh, and let’s not forget the cream cheese.

 

 

 

The cream cheese and bagels were mixed into the base, and the golden nectar was woven into the cream as it went into the pints.

 

 

 

There you have it.  Salt bagel, cream cheese and honey ice cream.  Extremely creamy.  A little salty and some serious sweet.

 

 

 

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 (6/29/2012) 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!

 

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Strawberry Cabernet with Black Pepper

We just couldn’t resist making another strawberry flavor for the second week in a row. The season is nearing it’s close, but we just had too many ideas that we had to showcase one more for you all. And it was this weeks flavor idea, that like others in the past, started out as something different from how it ended. The truth is, we make a brand spanking new flavor every single week, and sometimes the path to success leads us in different directions than originally conceptualized. It could be a minor change, like this weeks, but it may have a palpable affect on how the flavor hits your taste buds. Our ice cream has many parts working together to make sweet love and money in your mouth. Though one could argue that we couldn’t go wrong with a flavor, given the ingredients that we use, but believe us, there are a number of outcomes with every flavor profile that we choose. This weeks flavor is no different, so lets get to work and work through our Strawberry Cabernet with Black Pepper.

 

 

 

Black Peppercorns! They get ground and added to our ice cream base for a backdrop that brings out spice and pairs charmingly with strawberries.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This week we stopped by Linden Hills Farmers Market to pickup these beauteous strawberries grown at Svihel Farms in Foley, MN. They get cleaned up, halved and into the oven at low temperature for a slow roast.

 

 

 

 

 

We haven’t used wine in a flavor since we rolled out our Tarragon Beurre Blanc back in October of last year and it was a great success. No different here. We are not wine experts, and would never claim to be, but this bottle poured out flavors of ripe berries and nicely balanced tannins. But lets not get too caught up in drinking this wine, because it’s about to play an integral part in this flavor. We poured the bottle into a sauce pan with sugar and a bay leaf and began the reduction process.

 

 

 

 

 

Simmered down, the Cabernet takes on a syrup like consistency and it’s flavors are condensed and power packed.

And this is where my conceptualized idea started changing. I began this adventure with thoughts of a black pepper ice cream with strawberry chunks and a red wine reduction layered in. After reducing the wine to the consistency and flavor I was looking for, I was left with less than what I’d planned for layering into the pints. Plan B…

 

 

 

 

Might as well toss roasted strawberries in with the Cabernet reduction. This was a good idea! The red wine reduction brought out flavors in those strawberries that I dream about. Seriously people, it took strawberry flavor to an 11 on a 10 point scale. This fruit bomb gets added into our black pepper base at the end of the churn. The result?…

 

 

 

 

A rich vibrant red ice cream with a strawberry flavor that I have always wanted in a strawberry ice cream. The strawberries and red wine reduction are working in perfect harmony with the black pepper deepening the field and leaving a satisfying peppery finish. This strawberry ice cream is made for strawberry ice cream lovers. It’s what we like to call “money! in! your! mouth!”

 

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 (6/22/2012) 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!

 

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Smoked Strawberry Preserves with Candied Walnuts and Bleu

Sometimes flavor inspiration comes from the places we’d least expect it.  This one was inspired by a salad.  Specifically a spinach, walnut, strawberry and bleu cheese salad with balsamic vinaigrette.  I mentioned to my wife how much I liked this particular salad, and she said “you should make an ice cream flavor out of it”.  So I did. Or at least, my best interpretation of it.  Minus the spinach.

That’s as good as the story gets.  Strawberry season is upon us, so it was perfect timing to put this puppy to the test.

 

 

Starting with these gorgeous strawberries from Svihel farms in Foley, MN, that we picked up at our neighborhood farmers market, the Midtown Farmer’s Market

 

 

 

I opted to bypass the balsamic altogether, and instead smoke the strawberries and make a preserve out of them to add a different dimension to the flavor.

 

 

 

Onto the smoker they went..

 

 

 

Once they were finished with their applewood smoke bath, they were cooked down into a preserve to be swirled into the ice cream.

 

 

 

Smoky. Strawberry-y.

 

 

 

Then, the Fairbault Bleu Cheese.  If you follow us at all, you know we’re no strangers to cheese, and the cave aged Fairbault Dairy cheeses are spectacular.  This particular one is relatively mild, semi soft, and rife with wonderful moldy veins.  Perfect for ice cream.

 

 

 

 

The St. Pete’s Select went into the ice cream as small chips and chunks so it is almost a secret dimension to the flavor, but doesn’t overwhelm it.

 

 

 

Finally, walnuts.  At first I thought I’d add them in as plain salted walnuts, but at the last minute I decided to candy them, so they went into the ice cream with a salted toffee coating which gives them a little extra crunch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The finished ice cream is rippled with the smoky strawberry preserves, studded with crunchy, salted and candied walnuts, all offset by little bits of bleu cheese.  It’s a wild ride.

 

 

 

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 (6/15/2012) 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!

 

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