May 2014 – FROZBROZ

May 28, 2014

Watercress

We’re heading into our favorite time of year where we get to rely on fresh locally grown produce for what seems like such a short time. Because of this, we basically turn into skipping records for 3-4 months obsessed with how much fun it is to experiment with all of these fresh flavors. This time it’s Watercress. It’s readily available but not exactly easy to find, and why not jump at the chance to infuse this delightfully peppery plant into ice cream and see what magic happens?

When we start with new flavors like this we often find ourselves dealing with the temptation to build on top of them with other flavors – rather than let the singular flavor own the ice cream. In this case, I didn’t want anything to distract so its simply fresh watercress from Viroqua, Wisconsin steeped in our sweet cream base. Sometimes simplicity produces complexity.

The ice cream takes on just a slight hint of green from the steep, and gets a nice tint of earthy pepper-ness from the Watercress greens. An appropriate introduction into our summertime flavor adventures.

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 5/30/14 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!

May 21, 2014

Soy Brown Butter

About a month ago, I made a soba noodle salad with a sesame ginger soy dressing. Per the usual, my thoughts gravitated towards ice cream, and in the end, concentrating on soy sauce in ice cream. Salty? Sweet?…it has to be great. Days later, I overhear the other bro_z having a conversation about how butter and soy sauce are supposed to be some sort of magical combination. I was immediately thinking brown butter and soy, and so this week’s flavor was born – Soy Brown Butter. Let’s get started…

The New York Times calls it “The Sublime Combination”. Soy sauce, in this case Wan Ja Shan Tamari Soy made in the Hudson Valley of New York, and Brown Butter made from Hope Creamery butter in Hope, MN. This flavor may be simple, but these two very high quality ingredients make for more complex in flavors. Without the other, the flavors of one may not fully rise. There is the salty, malty, caramel-esk components in the soy and the nutty, buttery components of the brown butter. Together they bring tastes of sweet, salty, and umami. Gold! Usually we would be concerned about adding the liquid content of the soy into our ice cream base, as its water content would make for an icy batch, but with the butter’s fat content to counteract, there’s nothing to be concerned about here. The tamari soy and brown butter are mixed into our brown sugar ice cream base.

Soy Brown Butter! The sublime combination of sweet, salty and umami all wrapped up in a scoop.

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 5/23/14 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!

May 15, 2014

Tamarind w/Salted Coconut Caramel

Tamarind is one of those sleeper ingredients and it is utilized as an ingredient in more things than you might think – from Worcestershire sauce to pickles to candy and desserts . Its got a sour, almost dull citrus flavor that isn’t all that appealing on its own – but when sweetened with sugar it comes to life. I’ve been passing by a basket of the pods in the grocery store for a few months now and finally got around to snatching some up and making ice cream with them. For this flavor I chose to pair the slightly sour and tropical tamarind with a coconut caramel.

The tamarind is not the easiest thing to work with. These pods have a hard shell that must be cracked off, and found inside is the pulp which surrounds seed pods. To get the flavor into cream, I made a syrup and steeped tamarind directly into the ice cream base as well.

While the base steeped with tamarind pods, we went to work on the coconut caramel. The first step was to toast coconut, which makes them more flavorful and heats the coconut oils for a more powerful steep. The toasted coconut is then steeped in cream, which will is then used to cool the caramel and make it into the sauce.

Sea salt is added once the caramel has formed up, which brings out the coconut flavor even more.

After the tamarind ice cream has churned, we swirl the coconut caramel in and pack it into the pint.

And that brings us to the scoop – a delightfully sour and rich tamarind ice cream, decorated with ribbons of salty toasted coconut steeped caramel.

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 5/16/14 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!

May 8, 2014

Almond with Orange Blossom Syrup

If you like to cook, there’s a good chance you have a favorite cookbook. For me, one that I regularly turn to for recipes and ideas is “A Mediterranean Feast” by Clifford A. Wright. The book encompasses the evolution of Mediterranean cuisines and their history of origin. It’s a learning experience every time I open it up. A few years back a came across a recipe in the book that called for orange blossom water. It was something I had never worked with, but sparked my interest. Fast forward to a few months ago…I decided to purchase a bottle. Over the recent Easter weekend, I broke it out. My wife made an almond cake for our Spring feast, and I decided to make an orange blossom syrup to set the cake on and soak up. The combo was fantastic! The floral tones of the orange blossom syrup made for the perfect seasonal dessert. Pure inspiration for this week’s flavor – Almond with Orange Blossom Syrup

This is almond paste. Sometimes it comes in a can and sometimes it comes in a tube. Either way, it’s pretty delish. The cake my wife made called for a lot of almond paste, so that’s what I went with to make my ice cream base. I dissolved the paste into our standard organic cane sugar base during the cooking process. After a brief steep, the paste is strained through a fine mesh strainer to remove any gritty solids. The base is salted, cooled and ready to churn.

Next, the orange blossom syrup. The orange blossom water, as you might expect, tastes almost as a sweet flower blossom would smell. To offset the floral tones a bit, I decided to add a little lemon juice and lemon zest to the syrup. The syrup is simple, as they say…water and cane sugar boiled/reduced to the proper temperature. We finish the syrup by adding in our orange blossom water and straining out the lemon zest. The syrup is cooled and ready to layer into the almond ice cream during packaging.

Serious goodness here people. It’s a dense silky almond ice cream with pockets of sweet floral tones from the orange blossom syrup. It almost makes you feel as if Spring is in the air.

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 5/9/14 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!

May 1, 2014

Dark Chocolate Coconut Orange

We’ve only done a handful of coconut based, vegan/dairy free flavors, but we intend to do more – lots more. Everyone should be able to eat good ice cream, so we’re making it our duty to make sure the dairy free and vegan crowd get some too. Coconut ice cream presents some new challenges, but we’re committing ourselves to making sure we have flavors just as interesting and appealing in this category too – and making it our own goal to make sure we refine and perfect to ensure the ice cream is as good as it can possibly be.

As soon as we announced we were putting our first vegan/dairy free flavor up for sale, we had a immediate request last week for Dark Chocolate Coconut with a hint of Orange. Who are we not to oblige?

This flavor is pretty simple and the ingredient list fairly short. The foundation is nothing but coconut milk and organic cane sugar.

The orange flavor comes from zest of the orange, which steeps in the ice cream and gives it just a hint of orange flavor.

The final step is adding Valrhona cocoa powder in until a nice deep dark chocolate is achieved. And some sea salt to bring out the flavor even more.

The scoop is a luxurious dark chocolate with a whisper of orange – you can hardly tell it’s made with coconut milk. Vegan and dairy free.
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 5/2/14 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!