Nordeast Nectars – FROZBROZ

Ok, so this week we are going to test your inner most ice cream love. And not just your inner love, but your preception of ice cream love. And not just your percieved love, but your adventurous ice cream love.

On a recent trip to Pizzeria Lola my wife and I ordered one of the weekly specials: pizza topped with asparagus and truffle honey. Not only does Lola live up to all hype given, but this weekly pizza special was off the charts good. The idea resinated immediatley, and I couldn’t stop thinking about my process and how I would break it down into ice cream. Once asparagus hit the local farmers market, we were on it. Let’s get started with this week’s flavor, Asparagus with Truffle Honey.

Asparagus from the Midtown Farmers Market.

We cut off the tips and blanch them in boiling water to soften up and bring out their vibrant green color. We reserved the staulks and grilled them for delicious eats guys. After blanching, into the food processor for a spin. The puree is added into our organic cane sugar ice cream base right after cooking. We give it a generous salting and the solids are strained out through a fine mesh strainer. The asparagus ice cream is ready for churning.

Now that the asparagus ice cream is done, we’re ready to make our truffle honey. We were lucky enough to get our hands on some of the last remains of Nordeast Nectars honey. Last year many of their bees died off, but thankfully their queen is still alive. This year Britt Lundberg and her neighborhood crew are making efforts to regroup, and hopefully, with a name change, new packaging, and much hard work, we will see more of this local liquid gold from them. To make the truffle honey, we stir a small amount of truffle oil into the honey. The oil becomes suspended in the honey. The truffle honey gets layered into the pints during packaging.

Asparagus with Truffle Honey! It’s creamy asparagus ice cream with an itital burst of truffle flavor leading into a sweet honey finish. Testing your inner love, perceptions and adventures in ice cream. 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 6/21/13 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!

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!