Small Batch Ice Cream – Page 2

August 8, 2013

Blueberry Black Pepper Cinnamon Stripe

This time of year, our blog starts to sound like a broken record, with constant talk about the seasonal berries, and the upcoming/just starting harvest season of pretty much everything else we can grow in the midwest. And why not? For midwestern based, food obsessed fools like us, this is the greatest time of year. One that many of us take for granted, only because much of what we can grow for a month or two is available year round in grocery stores. But not too long ago, things like tomatoes, strawberries, sweet corn, watermelon…etc. were ONLY available at this time of the year, unless someone in your family was a studios canner. Even then they weren’t as good as fresh. When it all boils down to it, the excitement is part of us. The value of the harvest is in our genes. It means mother nature has cooperated for the most part and given us the gift of sustenance. For our farmers, and family it meant surviving another year. It means summer is almost over and we should eat and drink and converse in the sunset and enjoy life in the moment just this once. And all of that cheesy pillow talk aside, what it really means is second to none flavor.

So with my soliloquy over with, we’re doing another blueberry flavor this week. Because we can, and because the goodness of fresh north-woods blueberries dictates that we should. What’s different is we’re doing something we’ve never done before. A twofer. A two in one. Two kinds of ice cream that can be enjoyed separately or in harmony. What we’ll call, the stripe.

Blueberries and cinnamon are two flavors that make something special happen when they’re together. *cue the love songs* But when you have these prized local blueberries, sometimes you want to taste them on their own. Get the true flavor. Leave everything else out of it. So I chose to make two separate ice creams and pack them into the same pint, so you could do exactly that.

On a recent trip back from a weekend jaunt up north, I lucked into a blueberry stand on the main drag of Spooner, Wi. The stand was from Melton’s Blues – a place I definitely plan on going back to – and would recommend visiting. The blueberries were incredibly flavorful, and with 5 varieties to pick from, you really can’t go wrong. Check them out on Facebook right here.

I pureed and reduced the blueberries into a simple jam, and added some black pepper to provide just a tiny little bite.

The reduction was added directly into the ice cream base, to make a full on blueberry ice cream.

For the stripe, I made a simple cinnamon ice cream (a personal favorite)

To finish the job, both ice cream bases were churned simultaneously and alternately layered into the pints.

The result is literally yin and yang – rich fresh blueberry ice cream on one side, cinnamon on the other, with a tiny black pepper finish.
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 8/9/13 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 11, 2013

Dark Chocolate Strawberry Pistachio

Since local berries are one of our absolute favorite things of summer, its not uncommon for us to do multiple flavors with the same berry. Especially strawberries. When I began thinking about a new flavor concept for using strawberries, I chose to go the selfish route this time and do exactly what I wanted to eat. I knew pistachio was going to be one of the components. I toiled on different sugars or a combination thereof, as well as different forms of cream combinations (sour cream, cream cheese, goat cheese, goat milk, etc – and then it hit me. We’ve only done two (!) flavors previous to this with a chocolate base, (3X Chocolate, Georgia Walnut) and we’ve seriously neglected the chocolate lovers, myself being one of them. So that was that. Dark Chocolate, Strawberries and Pistachios.

The chocolate base has a good concentration of cocoa – not quite as much as our 3x chocolate since there needed to be balance with the other flavors, however its still a nice dark chocolate ice cream.

The gorgeous local strawberries were made into a nice thick syrup to be woven throughout the base.

The shelled, roasted and salted pistachios were thrown in during the churn to give a big salty crunch. The final product is a dark chocolate ice cream, rippled with fresh strawberry syrup and studded with salted crunchy pistachios.

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 7/12/13 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 4, 2013

Amarula

This is usually the time of year that we start rolling out all things local, since berries are finally coming around here in Minnesota. But this week, we are featuring a flavor that utilizes a fruit from across the Atlantic and then used to make a cream liqueur called Amarula. We were just recently introduced to Amarula by a couple who was interested in having us make it into an ice cream for their wedding. After making the flavor for their tasting, we decided it was definitely one we needed to release to the masses. This one is for you Shira and Bill! Let’s get started with this weeks flavor: Amarula…

Amarula Cream Liqueur. Made with Marula fruit, only grown in Africa, and said to be tart, sweet, refreshing, with a “guava-like” taste. The Marula fruits are squeezed of their juices, de-seeded, and then fermented into a wine. The wine is then distilled twice and cream is added. The result is a unique cream liqueur that is caramely like an Irish Cream, but has a hit of sweet/tart fruit to it.

To get the Amarula into the ice cream we unfortunatly need to remove the alcohol from the liqueur. To do this, we boil the liqueur on the stovetop and reduce slightly. The reduction is added straight into our organic cane sugar ice cream base and given a genrous salting before the churn.

Amarula ice cream y’all! It has an ultra creamy texture, similar to our Oat with Maple Brown Sugar, accompanied by notes of tropical fruit and salty caramel.

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 7/5/13 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!

June 27, 2013

Sour Cream Vanilla w/Pluot Jam and Crunchy Quinoa

We’ve talked a lot over the past few years about where our inspirations come from, and sometimes a flavor is developed from a number of different directions. This one began from a plan to create a flavor with the Pluot fruit – a hybrid fruit made from apricot and plum. Stone fruits are in season right now in a big way, and we try to take advantage of them before their season ends and the local berry season begins. The original plan was to make a Pluot jam with our Sour Cream Vanilla base.

Beautiful Flavorosa Pluot’s from our favorite local market, the Seward Co-op.

By total chance, the recent issue of Food and Wine magazine showed up the week before I planned on making this flavor, and I happened across a recipe for making crunchy quinoa to be used in a salad. Salad, schmalad – this was going in Pluot ice cream.

Good old fashioned uncooked Quinoa.

First the pluot jam. Making the jam was rather straightforward process, involving removal of the pits from the fruit, and then combining the pulp and skin with sugar and water, mashing and cooking down into a nice, thick jam.

Then came crisping up the quinoa. First the quinoa was lightly cooked until just tender and dried on a sheet pan. Once completely dry, the quinoa is fried in vegetable oil until it is brown and crunchy, and cooled on paper towels. The original recipe called for salt immediately upon removing from the oil, but I used both salt and sugar to give them a little sweetness as well.

The quinoa fry up with a surprising crunch and a dense nut-like flavor. Very tasty.

Finally the sour cream vanilla base is made with our favorite sour cream and vanilla beans. We use light sour cream because it keeps the fat content of the ice cream at the perfect level.

Our landing, is an incredibly silky vanilla ice cream, rippled with layers of Flavorosa Pluot jam and speckled with crunchy bits of quinoa throughout.

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 6/28/13 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!