rhubarb – FROZBROZ

June 7, 2015

Rhubarb Bar Lemon Thyme

We’re back on rhubarb this week – ’tis the season in Minnesota, and we’ve got to get our fill. This week, we’re riffing off of an old favorite of ours; Rosemary Lemon Bar. Instead of the rosemary infused ice cream, we’re doing a lemon thyme infusion, and making chewy shortbread rhubarb bars instead of lemon bars. It’s a win win guys! Let’s get started with this week’s flavor – Rhubarb Bar Lemon Thyme

As I mentioned, this is a riff off of our lemon bar ice cream, and the lemon bars…they’re my mother’s sacred recipe, they are oh soooooo good. The idea is to make a bar that stacks up to the buttery chewiness of the lemon bar, but with rhubarb instead. Also, the rhubarb compote we are using for these bars is a riff off of Serious Jams rhubarb. Her jam is incredible, and honestly, people should be fighting for jars from any one of her small batches. She is a master preservationist who takes the time to hand craft jars of joy.

For the bars, we make a shortbread crust with flour, sugar and butter. The crust is pressed into a pan and baked. The rhubarb compote with its syrup is mixed with eggs and flour, and then poured over the hot crust and baked longer. I think we accomplished our goal here. We did in fact. Buttery, chewy, and slightly tart, rhubarb bars. They get chopped up and added into the ice cream at the end of the churn.

For the ice cream base, we’re going to infuse it using finely grated lemon zest, and fresh thyme. We went with our standard cane sugar base for this one. The lemon zest and thyme are cooked with base as it pasteurizes, and after a brief steep, the lemon zest and thyme are strained out. The base is cooled and is ready for the churn.

The end result is everything we could have hoped for. A rich lemon thyme infused ice cream with chunkers of tart chewy rhubarb bars. It’s hard to get your fill of this one.

Rhubarb Bar Lemon Thyme

Shortbread Crust:
1 cup Butter
2 cups Flour, AP
1/2 cup Cane sugar

Filling:
4 Eggs
4 Tablespoons Flour
1 Tablespoon Lemon juice
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 1/3 Rhubarb compote with syrup(Recipe Here)

Ice Cream Base:
2 cups Heavy Cream
1 cup Milk
3/4 cup Cane Sugar
2 Eggs
10 Thyme sprigs
1 teaspoons sea salt
Zest, fine, 1 lemon

Instructions:

1. Shortbread Crust: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a food processor, pulse butter, flour and sugar. Press into 13″ x 9″ cake pan. Bake for 15 minutes.

2. Make Filling: In a bowl, whisk eggs, flour, lemon juice, salt and baking powder. Stir in rhubarb compote with syrup.

3. Finish Rhubarb Bars: When shortbread crust comes out of the oven, pour filling over the top and bake for 25-30 more minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool. Chop 1 cup of rhubarb bars and freeze. Reserve for ice cream. Chow down on remaining rhubarb bars.

4. Make ice cream base: Crack eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk fully. Add cane sugar and whisk. Add heavy cream, milk, salt, and lemon zest. Whisk until ingredients are combined. Add thyme sprigs.

3. Cook/pasteurize ice cream base: Over medium heat, whisk or stir base continuously. Keep stirring continuously until temperature reaches 165-170 degrees. Remove from heat. Using a fine mesh sieve, strain base into a clean bowl. Cool ice cream base to room temperature (an ice bath will do this in about 15-20 minutes). Put base in a clean container, cover, and chill in refrigerator overnight.

4. Churn ice cream base in ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions. Add 1 cup of chopped rhubarb bars to ice cream at the end of the churn. 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 6/19/15 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!

June 3, 2015

Cointreau Cardamom Rhubarb Compote

Here we go y’all…this is the official start to the growing/harvest season in Minnesota, and for us, that means more locally produced ingredients in every flavor we make. It’s like a sigh of relief that we’ve made it through the winter months. We can now let the Minnesota harvest guide us through the summer and fall months…a tour a la mode. And what better way to start off the season than with a favorite; Rhubarb. We’re going to spice this one up, as well as unlock some knowledge from the brilliant preservationist and jam maker, Heidi Skoog of Serious Jam. So let’s get started with this flavor – Cointrea Cardamom Rhubarb Compote.

For ice cream base, I wanted to pair the rhubarb with some subtle and complementary flavors. It’s not a secret that oranges pair well with rhubarb, but I was looking for trace amounts, so I decided to use Cointreau, an orange flavored liqueur. I added a small amount of Cointreau to the base as if I were using vanilla extract. My second base component is cardamom. It just made sense to me. Have you ever had a cardamom Christmas cookie with a jam/jelly glaze on top? Mmmmmmm. The combo works, trust me. Cardamom grows in a seed pod. To use, the seeds are removed from the pods and ground with either a spice grinder or mortar and pestle. Cardamom is not a subtle spice, so for the ice cream base, I went light with it, as I wanted the rhubarb compote to take the show. The ice cream base is pasteurized using organic cane sugar, cooled and is ready for the churn. But first, our rhubarb compote…

This is heirloom rhubarb from my garden. We use it every year, and it’s from a plant that was split off of my father-in-law’s parent’s farm near Milwaukee Wisconsin. For the ice cream, I wanted to make a rhubarb compote to swirl in. I wanted the kind of rhubarb that our good friend Heidi Skoog feed to us a year or two back. I would consider it a compote, since the fruit ends up whole in a syrup. I had never had rhubarb in this way before, and it blew my mind. Heidi has explained her process to me many times, but of course I couldn’t remember exact amounts. Instead of calling for the recipe, I decided to go with what I could remember. To my surprise, I ended up with a pretty damn good product. I still like Heidi’s version better, but for the ice cream, this worked out great.

As I remember it, the rhubarb got chopped very small. In a crock, or in my case, a stainless steel bowl, cane sugar and lemon juice are added. The lemon juice and sugar draw all of the water content out of the rhubarb as it macerates. The rhubarb goes into the refrigerator for two days until all of the sugar fully dissolves (I would take out and stir once or twice a day). After full maceration, the sugary rhubarb liquid is strained into a sauce pan where it is boiled into a syrup. The hot syrup is poured over the top of the strained/macerated rhubarb. That’s it! It’s a simple, yet very laborious and time consuming process that turns rhubarb into a compote that anyone would love. Unless you’re crazy. Then you wouldn’t like it. But you’d be crazy. The cooled compote is swirled into the Cointreau cardamom ice cream at the end of the churn.

Result? silky Cointreau and cardamom infused ice cream with a tart toothsome rhubarb compote. A great way to start off the growing season here in Minnesota!

Cointreau Cardamom Rhubarb Compote

5 Cups Rhubarb, 1/4″ dice (approx. 10-15 stalks)
2 1/2 cups Cane Sugar
1 Lemon, juiced, seeds removed

2 cups Heavy Cream
1 cup Milk
1/2 cup Cane Sugar
2 Eggs
2 teaspoons Cointreau
3/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 tsp Cardamom, freshly ground

Instructions:

1. Rhubarb Compote (makes enough for the ice cream and extra to eat!): Clean Rhubarb, and chop into 1/4 inch dice. Place rhubarb in a bowl, preferably a ceramic crock. Add the 2 1/2 cups sugar and juice of one lemon. Cover and macerate in refrigerator for two days, stirring occasionally. All sugar should be dissolved before proceeding. Strain liquid into a sauce pan and reserve rhubarb and spoon it into a one quart jar fitted with lid. Over high heat, reduce the liquid until a candy thermometer reads 220 degrees. Remove liquid from heat, and pour hot liquid over reserved rhubarb in one quart jar. Allow to cool, cover, and place in refrigerator until ready to use.

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

3. Cook/pasteurize ice cream base: Over medium heat, whisk or stir base continuously. Keep stirring continuously until temperature reaches 165-170 degrees. Remove from heat. Pour into a clean bowl. Cool ice cream base to room temperature (an ice bath will do this in about 15-20 minutes). Put base in a clean container, cover, and chill in refrigerator overnight.

4. Churn ice cream base in ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions. Add 1/3 – 1/2 cup of rhubarb compote to ice cream at the end of the churn. 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 6/5/15 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!

July 24, 2014

Blueberry Rhubarb

Que Andy Williams…”Its the most wonderful time….”

Seriously though, with ice cream most times of the year are pretty wonderful. But summer tops them all when we get our hands on local berries. We’re wrapping up an incredible and well utilized strawberry season and coming into the peak of blueberry season once again. Every year we usually create a few flavors based on each of these berries and we have so many ideas backlogged that it’s hard to decide what to do. We’ve been into combining fruits this summer and thanks to a 1947 New York court decision, Rhubarb is also considered a fruit. Either way, rhubarb and blueberry make a pretty incredible combination. Superlatives aside, lets get to the party. Rhuberry Blubarb!

Starting with this fresh rhubarb we procured from the Seward Co-op, and these incredibly flavorful blueberries fresh from Northfield, MN, we begin our journey.

Both the rhubarb and the blueberries are cooked down with sugar to eliminate the water content in them and keep them from making the ice cream icy. The blueberry jam is added straight into the cream for a deep blueberry ice cream flavor. The rhubarb is swirled in after the churn, leaving nice thick rivers of tart rhubarb jam that add a nice bright tartness to the bite.

The scoop: a rich blueberry ice cream, swirled with tart rhubarb jam. A perfect snapshot of mid-summer.

June 5, 2014

Vanilla Rhubarb with Pecan Crumble

Naturally, we’re continuing down spring’s path of locally grown produce. And for those of you who visited our pint sale last weekend, you may be thinking that we’re walking backwards down that path, because this week’s flavor was actually for sale last week. Fortunately, for two lucky peeps, there are a few pints left. This week we’re featuring one of spring’s first harvests, rhubarb, with this week’s flavor, Vanilla Rhubarb with Pecan Crumble.

As in year’s past, the rhubarb that we use in our ice cream is actually an heirloom variety that was passed down to me from my father-in-law. My father-in-law got his split from his parents’ old farm near Milwaukee, Wisconsin years ago. You might say, rhubarb is rhubarb, but in my opinion, it tastes better knowing where it came from. To make our vanilla rhubarb base, we first add a little Madagascar vanilla to our standard cane sugar base. We then make a rhubarb jam, first by chopping up our rhubarb, and then cooking it down in a pot with lemon juice, lemon zest and cane sugar. The fibers of the rhubarb break down and form a beautiful jam, which we swirl into our vanilla base before packaging.

We decided we wanted a little crunch time in this one, and pecans and graham crackers came to mind, so we decide to make a shortbread style crust. The pecans and graham crackers get pulsed in the food processor with flour, brown sugar and salt. The dough is pressed out on a sheet pan and baked until crusty. The crust chunkers are broken up and crumbled into the ice cream at the end of the churn.

It’s an irresistibly smooth vanilla ice cream swirled with Minnesota grown rhubarb jam, all studded with crunchy crumbles of pecan graham cracker crust. It’s the next stop on spring’s path.

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 6/6/14 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!

June 6, 2013

Rhubarb with Brandy Orange Caramel

Although you may not able to tell by the weather we’ve been having this year, it is actually Spring in Minnesota. Whatever the temperatures are, it doesn’t matter, it’s time to celebrate the beginning of the new growing season. And to start it all off, one of the first things out of the ground every spring is the beloved rhubarb. So let’s get this celebration started with this week’s flavor: Rhubarb with Brandy Orange Caramel.

This is heirloom rhubarb. The original plant started on my wife’s grandparents farm near Milwaukee, WI. It’s been split many times, but I have to say, this plant likes to get crazy in our yard, and if left alone would grow upwards of four to five feet in height. We twist and pull out the younger stalks for cooking.

We first puree the rhubarb completely. So you’re probably wondering why the puree is green and not pink in color? For the ice cream, I decided to peal the rhubarb first, to eliminate the posibility of retaining any stringing fiberous material. Because the puree will eventually end up in the ice cream, I wanted to make sure that fiberous material didn’t affect texture. In hind site, it didn’t matter, because we processed it fully, but I assure you, this green puree has evey bit of rhubard flavor. The puree goes into a sauce pan and is reduced with a squeeze of lemon juice until nearly all the liquid has boiled off. At this point, we set the puree in a fine mesh strainer and allow it to drain any left over liquid. Any residual liquid could potentially make this an icy rhubarb ice cream instead of a creamy one. The finished/drained puree is added into our organic cane sugar ice cream base.

For the caramel, as we almost always do, we start by caramelzing plain white sugar over high heat. Once caramelized, we whisk in our cream. And since we’re celebrating the beginning of the growing season, I thought we should probably throw in a party favor. Citrus and rhubarb are a classic combination, which gave way to exactly what party favor to use? Another classic combo – brandy and orange. And so it goes. We finish the caramel with brandy, orange zest and a generous salting.

Creamy rhubarb ice cream layered with a zesty brandy orange caramel. Let’s tip our glasses and celebrate the beginning of Minnesota’s growing season, FrozBroz style!

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 6/7/13 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!