April 2014 – FROZBROZ

April 24, 2014

White Chocolate Juniper

Spring is here and we are nearing the beginning of the growing season here in Minnesota. But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, we still have a few winter flavors to download on y’all. This week’s inspiration came from chef Linton Hopkins of Restaurant Eugene in Atlanta. Reading a publication, I ran across his recipe for cheese pie, which included a number of different components including a juniper ganache made with white chocolate and juniper berries. That’s it! This week’s flavor was born – White Chocolate Juniper. Shall we?

These are juniper berries from Penzeys Spices. If you are wondering what juniper tastes like, pour yourself a shot of gin, as gin is flavored with juniper berries. The have a pungent pine flavor to them. For our ice cream base, we want to infuse the base with juniper, so the berries are crushed and added in. The ice cream base is cooked infusing the cream with juniper. Next is the addition of white chocolate.

This is 100% organic cocoa butter. Cocoa butter is the fat that is extracted from the cocoa bean. Generally, chocolate is made with a combination of cocoa butter, cocoa powder and sugar. White chocolate, on the other hand, is made using cocoa butter, sugar, vanilla, and usually, milk powder. It smells strong of cocoa powder, but is quite plain in flavor…almost flavorless. When in your mouth, it melts easily, and hits the same area on your palate that a bitter dark chocolate would, but it is very mild. We thought we would try and make a white chocolate ice cream from scratch, and since two of the major components to white chocolate are already in our ice cream (dairy, sugar), this seemed to be a no-brainer. After the the crushed juniper berries are infused into the ice cream base, we whisked in vanilla and cocoa butter to the hot base. The mixture is strained, and a few of the left over crushed juniper berries are added back into the base. The base is cooled and is ready for the churn.

White Chocolate Juniper ice cream! The juniper and white chocolate combine in harmony as their bitter qualities are tamed by the sweet cream vanilla base.

Like to try some? You can be one of two lucky winners of this fantastic, 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. Winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 4/25/14 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!

April 20, 2014October 30, 2023

Minnesota Business Magazine

“Licenese to Chill: Why a key ingredient for the Minneapolis ice cream venture FrozBroz is patience”

April 17, 2014

Toast and Blueberry Bourbon Sage Jam (Serious Jam)

Once in awhile we stumble onto something that makes all of our experimentation worth it. Ever since we’ve befriended our pal Heidi Skoog of Serious Jam, I’ve wanted to do a Toast and Jam flavor to pair with one of her wonderful jams. The challenge was figuring out a way to make ice cream taste like toast without having soggy toast floating in it.

I had originally planned to make croutons like we do with many other baked goods, but I wasn’t convinced croutons from bread would hold up in the ice cream long enough. The “ah-ha” moment came as I pulled the toast from the toaster. When I was a little kid, my mom would save dark or burnt toast by scraping the dark spots off with a knife. Why not just scrape the toasted layer off the bread?

And that is exactly what I did. Using some fantastic sourdough from the New French bakery located right in our neighborhood, I made a bunch of dark toast and scraped the toasted strata off into the sweet cream base. The toasted bits all steeped in the base as it heated, and the toast flavor that is produced is nothing short of spectacular.

But before we get all caught up in the idea of how much fun toast ice cream is, let’s talk seriously for a moment about Serious Jam. For this flavor I used one of Heidi’s banner jars, Blueberry Bourbon Sage jam. It is a fantastic, classically made jam full of ripe blueberries – singing with hints of sage and bourbon. Every one of her jams is a winner. We’re lucky enough to share a kitchen with her so we’ve become a little spoiled when it comes to jam. Look for her to be selling right beside us in the kitchen at upcoming sales.

Back to the matter at hand, Toast and (Serious) Blueberry Bourbon Sage Jam ice cream. I was literally jumping up and down at the result – the ice cream is brimming with toast flavor, and makes the perfect match for some very Serious jam.

Like to try some? You can be one of two lucky winners of this fantastic, 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. Winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 4/18/14 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!

April 9, 2014January 29, 2024

Bone Marrow and Red Wine

Ahhhhh, finally, Spring is in the air! The city is finally coming alive again. This brutal winter is hopefully behind us and warm sunny days are ahead. For us broz, that means some good quality grill time, which works out perfect, because a good friend of ours just recently made a flavor request. Well, more like a comment, but we turned it into a request. So Kerry, after seeing your “no bone marrow flavor YET” comment, we just to make this happen…for you, for us, for ERRYBODY! Let’s get into this week’s flavor Bone Marrow and Red Wine…

These are 100% grass-fed marrow bones from Grass Run Farms in Dorchester, IA. If you’ve never had marrow before, go get some bones, roast them in your oven for about 20-25 minutes at 450 degrees, dig out the marrow, and spread it on some good toasted bread…you will be a happy person. Because this particular day is inspiring me to grill, I am going to grill the marrow bones for the ice cream. We wrap them up in a little foil packet and grill them indirect for 20 minutes or so. The marrow is then pushed out of the bone and into a pan that goes back on the grill to render out completely. The rendered marrow is strained through a fine mesh strainer and then whisked into our organic cane sugar ice cream base. The base gets salted, cooled, and is ready to churn.

For the red wine, we make a syrupy reduction using a red wine blend – Coppola Rosso. We reduce the wine to condense flavor, and then add sugar to create a nice glossy syrup. The syrup is swirled into the ice cream at the end of the churn.

Bone Marrow and Red Wine! The marrow ice cream is rich with a flavor similar to your grandma’s shortbread cookies made with lard. The brightness of the red wine reduction cuts through the richness of the marrow ice cream and balances out like a perfect wine and cheese pairing.

Like to try some? You can be one of two lucky winners of this fantastic, 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. Winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 4/11/14 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!

April 3, 2014

Black Sesame w/ Yuzu Honey

Ice cream in foreign countries – especially in Asia and South America – is, and has been far more adventurous than what we are used to eating here in the States. Black Sesame ice cream is essentially the Vanilla ice cream to Asian culture and deservedly so – the depth of flavor is intense, savory and sweet all at the same time. It also pairs fantastically with citrus, and provided us the opportunity to utilize Yuzu for the first time. It went something like this..

Yuzu is a citrus fruit native to East Asia that resembles across between grapefruit and orange – wonderfully acidic and zippy. Its nearly impossible to find fresh here, so we used Yuzu juice procured from our favorite, United Noodle. We combined some of the Yuzu juice with some local Ames farm honey to swirl into the mix.

The black sesame ice cream base is a relatively straighforward process. The sesame seeds are toasted in a pan and then ground fine. The ground sesame goes straight into our sweet cream and organic cane sugar base and steeped to bring out the flavor.

Once the steeping process is complete – the cream is churned and the Yuzu honey is swirled in at the end. And this is the point when it’s popularity abroad all makes sense.

The black sesame ice cream hearkens slightly of peanut butter but whisks you off quickly to a land all its own. The pockets of Yuzu honey offer a bright, sweet yet slightly sour contrast among it all.
Like to try some? You can be one of two lucky winners of this fantastic, 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. Winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 4/4/14 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!