August 2013 – FROZBROZ

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 22, 2013

Roasted Carrot

We’re hitting our end and we’ll continue with everyone’s favorite orange root. Carrots. Harvest time carrots are the best, and there’s no other time to get that carrot-y flavor out than now. This has been one we’ve wanted to do for years, and we finally got to it on our list.

These babies are gorgeous, and I can’t get enough of them during this time of the year. We grill them, eat them raw, slice, shredded..but nothing is better than roasted in the oven. The sweetness that comes out of the carrot during this process is incredible, and was the inspiration for this flavor.

So that’s what we did. We roasted them in the oven in butter until they got all caramelly.

Then they went for a spin in the food processor, and we’re mixed into our brown sugar base. The brown sugar brings the brown butter and the roasted carrot flavor out even more.

And this is our reward – an extremely rich and creamy, roasted carrot ice cream that sings with a deep roasted caramel flavor and ends with a nice carrot kick.

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 8/23/13 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 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!

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!