June 2015 – FROZBROZ

June 29, 2015

Buttermilk Strawberry Fudge Brownie

It’s strawberry season guys! Not to mention, it’s 4th of July week, so we’re taking this one out with a bang. Fans keep asking, “when are you going to do another flavor with chocolate in it?” Well, if this is going to be a bangin flavor, we’re going to do that too. We’re doing it all! This one is going to knock your socks off! Let’s get started with this week’s flavor – Buttermilk Strawberry Fudge Brownie

My hope is that people are never turned off by the word “buttermilk” being in a flavor. Buttermilk gives ice cream a rich subtle tang, and if you’ve had it with strawberries…yum, and if you’ve had it with chocolate…yum. We’re doing both, so it’s a double dog yummerson. For this flavor we’re using our favorite Kalona organic buttermilk. It gets added into our standard cane sugar base before pasteurization. Here we also have some beautiful strawberries that we picked up at the Midtown Farmers Market. We’re gonna jam these out to swirl into the buttermilk ice cream. The berries are cleaned, halved and go into a sauce pan with lemon juice and cane sugar. After a heavy simmer down, the strawberries are vibrant and jammy. The jam gets swirled into the ice cream at the end of the churn.

For the fudge brownies, we used a combination of Ecuador dark chocolate from Equal Exchange, and Valrona cocoa powder. The combination gets incorporated with butter, and then we add sugar, eggs, vanilla and flour before baking. We take the brownies out before the center is fully set, so the inside is gooey. These fudge brownies here…they’re the chewy gooey ones. The bomb ones. The bars are frozen before they’re chopped up and added into the ice cream.

Strawberry season and 4th of July come together in bangin ice cream form. Rich buttermilk ice cream with layers of strawberry jam and chunks of chewy dark chocolate fudge brownies. Let’s celebrate!

Buttermilk Strawberry Fudge Brownie

Strawberry Jam:
1 pint strawberries(about 1/2 pound), cleaned, stemmed and halved
3/4 cup + 2 Tablespoons sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons lemon juice

Fudge Brownies:
2 ounces dark chocolate(65% cocoa or higher), finely chopped
1 1/2 sticks of butter
1/4 cup + 2 Tablespoons cocoa powder
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon sea salt

Ice Cream Base:
2 cups Heavy Cream
1 cup Buttermilk
3/4 cup Cane Sugar
2 Eggs
1/2 teaspoon sea salt

Instructions:

1. Strawberry Jam: Place a plate in the freezer. In a medium saucepan combine strawberries and lemon juice. Let stand for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in sugar. Bring mixture to a boil over high heat, stirring frequently. Cook and stir until bubbles subside and jam appears slightly thickened, about 15 minutes. To test doneness, spoon a small amount onto the chilled plate. If jam wrinkles when you push your finger into it, it is done. If not, cook and stir a little longer before testing again. Let cool; cover and chill completely.

2. Make Fudge brownies: Preheat the oven to 350°. Line a 9-inch square cake pan with foil, and butter foil. In a large saucepan, melt the butter with the chocolate over low heat, stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat. Whisking them in one at a time until thoroughly incorporated, add the cocoa, sugar, eggs, vanilla, flour and sea salt. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake in the center of the oven for about 35 minutes, until the edge is set but center is still a little soft. If a toothpick is inserted into the center it comes out coated with a little of the batter. Let the brownies cool at room temperature. Lift the brownies from the pan and peel off the foil. Chop 3/4 cup of brownies into 1/2 dice for ice cream. Freeze chopped brownies. Chow remaining brownies.

3. Make ice cream base: Crack eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk fully. Add cane sugar and whisk. Add heavy cream, buttermilk, and salt. Whisk until ingredients are combined.

4. Cook/pasteurize ice cream base: Over medium heat, whisk or stir base continuously. Keep stirring continuously until temperature reaches 165-170 degrees. Remove from heat. Cool ice cream base to room temperature (an ice bath will do this in about 15-20 minutes). Put base in a clean container, cover, and chill in refrigerator overnight.

5. Churn ice cream base in ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions. Add 3/4 cup of chopped fudge brownies to ice cream at the end of the churn. Swirl in strawberry jam after ice cream is in storage container. Store ice cream in air tight container in freezer until chow time.

*Yields approximately 2.5 pints

If you’d rather not make it, 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 7/3/15 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally in Minneapolis. Prizes must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!

June 25, 2015

Mojito

Nothing spells summer like sipping on a Mojito in the sun. For those of you not familiar, a mojito is a rum-based cocktail flavored with fresh mint, lime and mixed with club soda. It’s a flavor we’ve kicked around for ice cream a number of times, but when we recently solicited our facebook fans for flavor ideas it came roaring back to life. With that extra encouragement we went back to the drawing board and came up with a version that we’re pretty darn happy with – and hopefully our fans will be as well.

This flavor revolves around the mint, lime and rum of the mojito. To avoid having a mint ice cream that would overpower the rum and lime flavors, we chose to put the mint into a syrup.

First the mint is pureed with a bit of water and then brought to a boil with sugar to create a syrup.

Since the mint loses it’s nice green color and a some of the fresh flavor while being cooked into the syrup, more fresh mint is added into it once the syrup has cooled. In addition, the rum part of the equation comes in here -the rum is also added to the syrup once cool. We add it to the syrup rather than the ice cream itself because it has a tendency to stand out a bit more in the flavor when concentrated into a syrup vs. diluted into the ice cream base. The syrup gets swirled into the ice cream at the very end.

The base of the ice cream holds the lime flavor. And the best way to naturally impart a fresh lime flavor into the cream is to use the zest of the lime. The lime zest steeps in the cream during the heating process and creates a nice lime flavor without adding any additional water content (which is ice cream’s #1 enemy).

The scoop is a summery lime ice cream swirled with a fresh mint and rum syrup. Happy summer!

Mojito

2 Cups Heavy Cream
1 Cup Milk ((choose your percentage based on how fatty/creamy you’d like your ice cream to be – the higher percentage the creamier the ice cream)
2 Large Eggs
1-3/4 Cup of sugar
1 Cup of fresh mint
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1 Tablespoon Rum
1 Tablespoon of Lime Zest

Instructions:

Prepare syrup (should be prepared at least 1 day ahead: Puree 1 Cup of mint with 1/2 Cup of water. Place mint/water puree in pot and add 1 Cup of sugar. Bring mixture to light boil over high heat until it reaches a temp of 220 degrees Fahrenheit. Or if you don’t have a candy thermometer (I do this even with one): boil for approximately 5-7 minutes, remove pot from heat and spoon some of the syrup into a small glass ramekin, plate or bowl. Place the sample in your freezer for around 15 minutes. When at least 15 minutes have passed, and make sure it has cooled to a sticky syrup consistency. If its really thin you will need to boil a bit longer and do the freezer test again. If it’s too thick, you might need to add a tablespoon of water to the pot. Once you have reached that desired syrupy consistency you know you’ve got it where you want it. Once the whole mix is cool (this is key) add another 1/4 cup of finely chopped mint along with the rum and mix well. Then cool it all in a container until you are ready to freeze your ice cream.

2. Make ice cream base: Crack eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk fully. Add 3/4 Cup sugar, and lime zest and whisk. Add cream, milk, salt and and whisk until all are fully combined.

4. Cook/pasteurize ice cream base: Place ice cream base in a small pot and heat over medium heat, whisking or stirring continuously until temperature reaches 165-170 degrees. Remove from heat and cool to room temperature (an ice bath will do this in about 15-20 minutes).

5. Churn ice cream base in ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions. Swirl in the mint rum syrup as you pack the frozen ice cream in a freezer proof container. Let freeze for at least 4 hours or preferably overnight (if you can wait). Enjoy!

*Yields approximately 2.5 pints
If you’d rather not make it, 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 6/26/2015 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally in Minneapolis. Prizes must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!

June 11, 2015

Mango Lassi

I was dead set on doing a mango flavor this week because the Ataulfo mangos are here and they are so dang good. There were a lot of iterations and ideas to pair with the mangos including habeneros, coconut, mint, basil and lime – all which we might play with down the road. However, the idea of making a mango lassi ice cream hit me like a lightning bolt and there was no way I could pass it up. Nothing like something refreshing and invigorating to celebrate early summer.

A “lassi”, if you are not familiar, is a drink similar to a smoothie – very popular throughout India and surrounding countries. It’s typically made with pureed fruit, spice and yogurt. For this week’s flavor the atualfo mangos were paired with greek yogurt and cardamom.

The process for this ice cream begins with fresh ripe mango, pureed with greek yogurt. We’re big fans of the Greek Gods greek yogurt because it’s got a great creamy texture that works perfect in ice cream.

While the key ingredient in this flavor is having good quality, ripe mangos – the ingredient that brings it all home is the cardamom. In this flavor the cardamom takes a subtle back seat role to the mango flavor, but the flavor as a whole wouldn’t be complete without it.

The scoop – mango lassi wrapped up in a scoop of ice cream. A rich, mango yogurt ice cream tinted with cardamom. And you can pick up a pint for yourself starting this Saturday at our home kitchen.

Mango Lassi Ice Cream

(makes approx 1-1/2 quarts)

Ingredients:

2C Heavy Cream
1C Greek Yogurt, full fat (or less if you’d prefer)
2 Mangos
2 Eggs
3/4C Sugar
1/2 tsp ground cardamom

Instructions:

Peel and dice mango and puree with yogurt in food processor or with wand blender until all is smooth. Crack eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk fully. Add mango puree, cream, and cardamom and whisk again until all are fully incorporated. Place ice cream mix in heavy pot and cook over medium heat, stirring continuously until temperature reaches 165 degrees. Remove from heat. Cool the ice cream base to room temperature (an ice bath will do this in about 15-20 minutes). Once cool, place ice cream mix in a container, cover, and chill in refrigerator overnight.

3. Churn ice cream base in ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions. Freeze in a tightly covered container for at least 4 hours, preferably overnight if you can wait. Then, enjoy!

*Yields approximately 2.5 pints of ice cream.

If you’d rather not make it, 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 6/12/15 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally in Minneapolis. Prizes must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!

June 7, 2015

Rhubarb Bar Lemon Thyme

We’re back on rhubarb this week – ’tis the season in Minnesota, and we’ve got to get our fill. This week, we’re riffing off of an old favorite of ours; Rosemary Lemon Bar. Instead of the rosemary infused ice cream, we’re doing a lemon thyme infusion, and making chewy shortbread rhubarb bars instead of lemon bars. It’s a win win guys! Let’s get started with this week’s flavor – Rhubarb Bar Lemon Thyme

As I mentioned, this is a riff off of our lemon bar ice cream, and the lemon bars…they’re my mother’s sacred recipe, they are oh soooooo good. The idea is to make a bar that stacks up to the buttery chewiness of the lemon bar, but with rhubarb instead. Also, the rhubarb compote we are using for these bars is a riff off of Serious Jams rhubarb. Her jam is incredible, and honestly, people should be fighting for jars from any one of her small batches. She is a master preservationist who takes the time to hand craft jars of joy.

For the bars, we make a shortbread crust with flour, sugar and butter. The crust is pressed into a pan and baked. The rhubarb compote with its syrup is mixed with eggs and flour, and then poured over the hot crust and baked longer. I think we accomplished our goal here. We did in fact. Buttery, chewy, and slightly tart, rhubarb bars. They get chopped up and added into the ice cream at the end of the churn.

For the ice cream base, we’re going to infuse it using finely grated lemon zest, and fresh thyme. We went with our standard cane sugar base for this one. The lemon zest and thyme are cooked with base as it pasteurizes, and after a brief steep, the lemon zest and thyme are strained out. The base is cooled and is ready for the churn.

The end result is everything we could have hoped for. A rich lemon thyme infused ice cream with chunkers of tart chewy rhubarb bars. It’s hard to get your fill of this one.

Rhubarb Bar Lemon Thyme

Shortbread Crust:
1 cup Butter
2 cups Flour, AP
1/2 cup Cane sugar

Filling:
4 Eggs
4 Tablespoons Flour
1 Tablespoon Lemon juice
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 1/3 Rhubarb compote with syrup(Recipe Here)

Ice Cream Base:
2 cups Heavy Cream
1 cup Milk
3/4 cup Cane Sugar
2 Eggs
10 Thyme sprigs
1 teaspoons sea salt
Zest, fine, 1 lemon

Instructions:

1. Shortbread Crust: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a food processor, pulse butter, flour and sugar. Press into 13″ x 9″ cake pan. Bake for 15 minutes.

2. Make Filling: In a bowl, whisk eggs, flour, lemon juice, salt and baking powder. Stir in rhubarb compote with syrup.

3. Finish Rhubarb Bars: When shortbread crust comes out of the oven, pour filling over the top and bake for 25-30 more minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool. Chop 1 cup of rhubarb bars and freeze. Reserve for ice cream. Chow down on remaining rhubarb bars.

4. Make ice cream base: Crack eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk fully. Add cane sugar and whisk. Add heavy cream, milk, salt, and lemon zest. Whisk until ingredients are combined. Add thyme sprigs.

3. Cook/pasteurize ice cream base: Over medium heat, whisk or stir base continuously. Keep stirring continuously until temperature reaches 165-170 degrees. Remove from heat. Using a fine mesh sieve, strain base into a clean bowl. Cool ice cream base to room temperature (an ice bath will do this in about 15-20 minutes). Put base in a clean container, cover, and chill in refrigerator overnight.

4. Churn ice cream base in ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions. Add 1 cup of chopped rhubarb bars to ice cream at the end of the churn. Store ice cream in air tight container in freezer until chow time.

*Yields approximately 2.5 pints

If you’d rather not make it, 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 6/19/15 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally in Minneapolis. Prizes must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!

June 3, 2015

Cointreau Cardamom Rhubarb Compote

Here we go y’all…this is the official start to the growing/harvest season in Minnesota, and for us, that means more locally produced ingredients in every flavor we make. It’s like a sigh of relief that we’ve made it through the winter months. We can now let the Minnesota harvest guide us through the summer and fall months…a tour a la mode. And what better way to start off the season than with a favorite; Rhubarb. We’re going to spice this one up, as well as unlock some knowledge from the brilliant preservationist and jam maker, Heidi Skoog of Serious Jam. So let’s get started with this flavor – Cointrea Cardamom Rhubarb Compote.

For ice cream base, I wanted to pair the rhubarb with some subtle and complementary flavors. It’s not a secret that oranges pair well with rhubarb, but I was looking for trace amounts, so I decided to use Cointreau, an orange flavored liqueur. I added a small amount of Cointreau to the base as if I were using vanilla extract. My second base component is cardamom. It just made sense to me. Have you ever had a cardamom Christmas cookie with a jam/jelly glaze on top? Mmmmmmm. The combo works, trust me. Cardamom grows in a seed pod. To use, the seeds are removed from the pods and ground with either a spice grinder or mortar and pestle. Cardamom is not a subtle spice, so for the ice cream base, I went light with it, as I wanted the rhubarb compote to take the show. The ice cream base is pasteurized using organic cane sugar, cooled and is ready for the churn. But first, our rhubarb compote…

This is heirloom rhubarb from my garden. We use it every year, and it’s from a plant that was split off of my father-in-law’s parent’s farm near Milwaukee Wisconsin. For the ice cream, I wanted to make a rhubarb compote to swirl in. I wanted the kind of rhubarb that our good friend Heidi Skoog feed to us a year or two back. I would consider it a compote, since the fruit ends up whole in a syrup. I had never had rhubarb in this way before, and it blew my mind. Heidi has explained her process to me many times, but of course I couldn’t remember exact amounts. Instead of calling for the recipe, I decided to go with what I could remember. To my surprise, I ended up with a pretty damn good product. I still like Heidi’s version better, but for the ice cream, this worked out great.

As I remember it, the rhubarb got chopped very small. In a crock, or in my case, a stainless steel bowl, cane sugar and lemon juice are added. The lemon juice and sugar draw all of the water content out of the rhubarb as it macerates. The rhubarb goes into the refrigerator for two days until all of the sugar fully dissolves (I would take out and stir once or twice a day). After full maceration, the sugary rhubarb liquid is strained into a sauce pan where it is boiled into a syrup. The hot syrup is poured over the top of the strained/macerated rhubarb. That’s it! It’s a simple, yet very laborious and time consuming process that turns rhubarb into a compote that anyone would love. Unless you’re crazy. Then you wouldn’t like it. But you’d be crazy. The cooled compote is swirled into the Cointreau cardamom ice cream at the end of the churn.

Result? silky Cointreau and cardamom infused ice cream with a tart toothsome rhubarb compote. A great way to start off the growing season here in Minnesota!

Cointreau Cardamom Rhubarb Compote

5 Cups Rhubarb, 1/4″ dice (approx. 10-15 stalks)
2 1/2 cups Cane Sugar
1 Lemon, juiced, seeds removed

2 cups Heavy Cream
1 cup Milk
1/2 cup Cane Sugar
2 Eggs
2 teaspoons Cointreau
3/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 tsp Cardamom, freshly ground

Instructions:

1. Rhubarb Compote (makes enough for the ice cream and extra to eat!): Clean Rhubarb, and chop into 1/4 inch dice. Place rhubarb in a bowl, preferably a ceramic crock. Add the 2 1/2 cups sugar and juice of one lemon. Cover and macerate in refrigerator for two days, stirring occasionally. All sugar should be dissolved before proceeding. Strain liquid into a sauce pan and reserve rhubarb and spoon it into a one quart jar fitted with lid. Over high heat, reduce the liquid until a candy thermometer reads 220 degrees. Remove liquid from heat, and pour hot liquid over reserved rhubarb in one quart jar. Allow to cool, cover, and place in refrigerator until ready to use.

2. Make ice cream base: Crack eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk fully. Add cane sugar and whisk. Add heavy cream, milk, Cointreau, salt and ground cardamom. Whisk until ingredients are combined.

3. Cook/pasteurize ice cream base: Over medium heat, whisk or stir base continuously. Keep stirring continuously until temperature reaches 165-170 degrees. Remove from heat. Pour into a clean bowl. Cool ice cream base to room temperature (an ice bath will do this in about 15-20 minutes). Put base in a clean container, cover, and chill in refrigerator overnight.

4. Churn ice cream base in ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions. Add 1/3 – 1/2 cup of rhubarb compote to ice cream at the end of the churn. Store ice cream in air tight container in freezer until chow time.

*Yields approximately 2.5 pints

If you’d rather not make it, 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 6/5/15 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally in Minneapolis. Prizes must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!