September 2013 – FROZBROZ

September 26, 2013

Sweet Corn Chevre with Candied Bacon

We’re still holding on to summer, and making the decision to roll out another sweet corn flavor is making it easy. So easy, that as soon as I mentioned the idea to my wife, she said, why don’t you make a sweet corn ice cream with candied bacon; you could even throw in some Singing Hills chevre too, if you wanted? Hell yes! That’s exactly what I wanted to do! – Sweet Corn Chevre with Candied Bacon. Come on now, this is how we do it…

First things first – finding great sweet corn, and that means finding a farmer who takes pride in harvesting at the perfect time to ensure peak sweetness. One thing is for sure, you know great sweet corn when you have it. And since it’s only here for a limited time each year, it’s hard to differentiate between all of the great sweet corn growers out there. Us broz are rather partial to the sweet corn from Peter’s Pumkins at the Midtown Farmer’s Market. After husking the corn, we cut it off the cob and throw it into a blender with cream. The idea is to get as much raw sweet corn flavor into our ice cream base as possible.

Next, we take our raw pureed corn cream and make our regular ice cream base with organic cane sugar. We then add chevre to the mix…Singing Hills Dairy chevre. If you haven’t had Singing Hills Dairy cheese, you need to, so go to Mill City or Fulton Farmers Market this Saturday and eat it. Ok, back to it…we then heat our corny ice cream base with chevre and strain it through a fine mesh strainer. The sweet corn chevre base is ready to be churned. But not before bacon time!

For the candied bacon, we start with Lorentz bacon from Canon Falls, MN. We rub down the bacon with brown sugar and bake it in the oven until crispy and candied. The bacon is then chopped up and added into the sweet corn chevre base at the end of the churn.

Summer is still here folks, and so is with rich sweet corn infused ice cream with creamy chevre and crunchy candied bacon. It’s that 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 9/27/13 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!

September 19, 2013

Mint Chocolate Chip with Yellow Watermelon Swirl

This was a flavor I toiled over for months. It wasn’t supposed to be a mint chocolate chip ice cream. It was supposed to be a watermelon ice cream. I spent most of my time with this concept, trying to figure out and decide on how I wanted to do a watermelon ice cream. Then, when it finally came time to execute, I cut open the watermelon only to find out I had purchased the yellow variety. Now, that isn’t necessarily a deal breaker – yellow watermelon is incredible. But for a first watermelon excursion, it just seemed like it had to be red – that’s what everyone thinks of at first blush. So it was time to improvise. I had planned on using mint in my watermelon flavor, and after some deliberation with my frozen brother I ended up in left field. No surprise. My watermelon ice cream turned into our twist on mint chocolate chip. Not only did it work splendidly, but as fate would have it, I seemed to have ended up where I should have.

First the watermelon syrup. First they are taken apart and seeded. Then pureed and reduced over heat with sugar into a beautiful golden syrup.

The mint is pureed with some cream and then mixed into our standard ice cream base.

We found these fantastic fair trade chocolate chips at our favorite co-op and threw them in at the end of the churn – they add a good hearty crunch and chocolate punch.

The watermelon syrup is swirled in as the ice cream is packed into the pints, and the end result is pretty awesome.

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 9/20/13 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!

September 6, 2013

Borage Buerre Blanc

Want to learn something new today? Ok. Have you ever heard of Borage? Maybe you have, but I hadn’t, until my friend Christine dropped us a line and asked if we wanted to use it in our ice cream. Borage is a freely seeding annual plant that is said to taste like cucumber. It is considered an herb, but it is usually grown as a flowering plant in vegetable gardens, as it attracts pollinating bees. Now that you learned something new, allow me to show you something else new…us making borage ice cream with white wine. It’s this week’s flavor: Borage Buerre Blanc. Let’s do this!

This is a picture of the borage plant, similar to the one growing in Christine’s garden. Both the flowers and leaves are edible, but this week, we’re using just the leaves. The borage leaves are meant to be used young, because as they mature, they get a prickly fuzz. This plant was mature, but that’s ok, because we’re steeping the leaves for flavor and straining out after heating. I wanted to try to infuse as much of the borage leaves’ cucumber flavor as possible into our organic cane sugar base.

To pair with the cucumber flavor, I was contemplating acidic flavors , like lemon, lime, vinegar, etc., but in the end decide to pair it with a French sauce called a Buerre Blanc, AKA white butter. A Buerre Blanc can be made with either vinegar or wine, and I opted for the wine approach. I want a light, dry white wine, that would go nicely with a cucumber salad, so I decided to go with this Pacific Rim Dry Reisling. Along with the wine, peppercorns and a bay leaf get reduced down until almost dry in the pan. A small amount of cream is added, and then butter to finish it off. The sauce is strained through fine mesh and ready to use. Buerre Blancs are rich and acidic and generally pair well with a light delicate fish. Today, we’re going to add it into our borage infused ice cream to give it a little tang.

Borage Buerre Blanc ice cream! It has a subtle earthy cumcumber flavor that is accompanied by a light acidic touch provided by the Buerre Blanc. Something new, but just another day for the 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 9/13/13 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!

September 5, 2013

Cream Cheese Red Pepper Slivered Almond

Red Peppers are another one of those summer veggies that are deceivingly sweet, especially when they are fresh out of the dirt. I’ve been obsessing about ice cream flavors involving red peppers every summer, but its taken nearly 2 years for me to get to it on the list. Once I finally decided the time had arrived, then I had to decide what and how. I’d contemplated a full red pepper infused ice cream. A romesco inspired flavor was another conceptual flavor. Yet another was a Pimiento cheese which red pepper is a star of. We will likely come back to all fo these in time. In the end, I decided on a variation that curved away from all of those, utilizing the pepper as a sweet jelly and combining it with cream cheese. If you’ve ever had cream cheese covered in red pepper jelly, you know where I’m headed.

The first step was to roast the peppers to concentrate the sugars and get the skins off.

Once clean, the roasted peppers were pureed up coarsely, combined with our good friend sugar, some lemon juice and simmered down to a sweet jelly like consistency.

For an added crunch, I chose to go with blanched, slivered almonds to provide a contrast in texture without overwhelming in flavor.

Went with our cream cheese base, sprinkled in the slivered almonds during the churn and layered in the sweet red pepper jelly as it went into the pint.

And there you have it. End of summer heaven – lucious cream cheese ice cream, studded with crunchy slivered almonds and rippled with red pepper jelly.

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 9/5/13 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!