Erik – Page 16 – FROZBROZ

March 14, 2013

Coconut Bar Banana Caramel

Ok, so it’s March here in Minnesota and this is where the winter starts really dragging arrss. Fortunately, at the end of January I was able to break up the monotony of winter on a family trip to Mexico. It was there

that my sister-in-law purchased one of these coconut bars from the local grocery. I love coconut, so this bar was absolutely aaamaaazing! It’s ingredients: coconut, sweetened condensed milk, and sugar. Simple. Don’t ask what the pink stuff is on top, but the bar itself, is basically a bar version of a macaroon. The coconut is ground, so the texture ends up being chewy and much less course than a macaroon. It’s everything a coconut lover wants their coconut to be. And this is just the inspiration needed for this weeks flavor: Coconut Bar Banana Caramel. Lets do this…

In keeping with the simplicity of the original coconut bar, we stuck with plain unsweetened coconut and sweetened condensed milk. They both get pulverized in the food processor.

Next, the coconut mixture is pressed into a glass baking dish lined with parchment and baked at a low temperature. Once out of the oven, we puree lime zest and cane sugar in the food processor. The lime sugar is sprinkled over the top of the bars and brûléed with a torch. These bars? These ones are good. Really good! They get chopped up and added into our plain sugar cane ice cream base. Did I mention that we’re gonna add a banana caramel to this thing? Well, we are.

Time to work on the banana caramel. Yes, the banana pictured above doesn’t look that appealing, but it has more flavor than any good-looking banana I’ve ever tasted. It’s actually an overly ripe banana that has been preserved in the freezer. I throw all of our over-ripe bananas in the freeze and they are fantastic for smoothies, banana bread, or any other baking recipe. The bananas get sliced, placed on parchment, and slowly roasted in a low heat oven.

When they come out, we’re left with beautiful caramelized bananas that have lost much of their moisture content, but have retained all of their natural sugars and flavor. We make a traditional caramel by boiling granulated sugar. The caramel is finished with cream, and the bananas are added in after getting mashed, making for banana caramel ridiculousness. It’s just a lovely caramel. Banana caramel. Hot! It gets layered into the pints during packaging.

And here it is! Coconut Bar Banana Caramel! Just enough to make you forget that it’s STILL winter here in Minnesota, and enough to have you start thinking about eating ice cream dripping down your face in the months to come.

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 3/15 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!

February 28, 2013

Brown Ale with Bacon Marmalade

Ok, so for evers ago, we talked about making a beer ice cream, and actually, I made a single attempt the week before starting this blog two years ago. At the time, we would have been one of the first to produce such a product, but in the end, it didn’t work out. The flavors weren’t there, the texture was icy, and sadly, our desire to continue the fight was diluted by hundreds of other flavor ideas. This week, the fight is on, and this time, we gonna win this one. Also, we’re going to add bacon. Let’s get started with this weeks flavor: Brown Ale with Bacon Marmalade

Raise your hand if you’ve had this beer? Now, if your hand is down, go get one. This is the Lost Trout Brown Ale from Third Street Brewhouse out of Cold Spring, MN…by far the best brown ale that I have had in a long time. Brown Ales tend to be sweet and syrupy for me, but this one is crisp, clean with a slightly bitter caramel finish. For the ice cream, the brown ale is reduced into a syrup and mixed into our organic cane sugar ice cream base. This ice cream alone is versatile for a number of pairings, but this week, I went back through my notes and found a recipe that was screaming for this one – Bacon Maramalade

This bacon marmalade is rich, sweet and acidic. It’s main components: Lorentz uncured bacon from Canon Falls, MN, bourbon, fennel and coffee.

The bacon in chopped and rendered until crisp. The fennel is diced and simmered in renderings until translucent. The bacon fat is drained, and the bacon, fennel bourbon and coffee go into a sauce pan along with brown sugar, maple syrup and cider vinegar. The mix is simmered down for about an hour until the liquid has reduced to a very light syrupy consistency.

The mix goes into the food processor and is pulsed until a marmalade-esk texture is achieved. Talkin versatile? This bacon marmalade can be spread on toast, your burger, pizza, on top of your 85% cocoa chocolate bar. Seriously. No, seriously. But we decided to layer it into our brown ale ice cream.

Boom! Brown ale ice cream with bacon marmalade. It’s rich, creamy and tangy. The flavors and textures are all there, and now we have conquered our first beer cream. Stay tuned, this could be the start of our next obsession.

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 3/1 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!

February 14, 2013

Rose with Cinnamon Honey

Happy Valentines Day!! This week we really wanna say thanks to all who continue to follow us and dig what we’re doing. We love you! Will you be our valentine? Be mine. Hug me. Cutie Pie. Lets Kiss. Be True. Sweetheart. Love Me. Seriously though, love you. And since we love you, and it’s Valentines Day and all, we thought we would give you roses on this special day. Not roses though. Rose ice cream. Rose ice cream with cinnamon honey. Let’s get started…

Rose buddies! It’s not really the season to find fresh rose buds suitable for cooking with, so we’re using dried. Don’t worry sweetie pie, the flavor is all there. For our rose ice cream base, we use plain organic cane sugar, and steep the rose buds in the cream. The buddies get strained out, and the mix is ready for the churn.

Next, we make our cinnamon honey. For this batch we’re using our last jar of local honey from Nordeast Nectars. We heat to thin out so that we can easily incorporate the cinnamon. Done! The cinnamon honey gets layered into the pints during packaging.

Happy Valentines Day! We made you rose ice cream layered with cinnamon honey. The rose flavor is floral and earthy while the cinnamon honey balances the bouquet with a touch of sweetness and spice. For real though, we love you! Hearts, Frozbroz

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 2/15 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!

January 31, 2013January 29, 2024

Lime w/ Macadamia and Ginger Caramel

We are going to keep the beach vibes going this week to shed more warmth on these harsh winter months. Recently we rolled out our Coconut & Mangosteen Caramel, Jasmine Citrus Saffron and Georgia Walnut. This week, we’re back at it with another tropical inspired flavor jumble with our Lime w/ Macadamia and Ginger Caramel. Let’s do this!

Lime lime! Limes! Lime! So these are limes. First, we zest. Then, roll them out and juice em. The juice is poured into a sauce pan with equal parts sugar, then reduced into a syrup. The syrup and lime zest are both added to our ice cream base to ensure full lime limeness. It’s ready for the churn.

Ginger! I had been watching Top Chef a few weeks back and for those who are familiar, there are contests every episode called “quickfire” challenges. This one in particular made use of ginger. Someone on the show made a ginger caramel, and I instantaneously knew that this was going in one of our next flavors. This week’s flavor was designed around the idea of this ginger caramel. The process was not divulged on the show, but we’ve made caramel hundreds of times, and intuition had me peeling and grating the ginger first.

Next, the ginger got heated with cream, steeped to fully infuse, and then strained out of the cream. Next, we made a traditional caramel by boiling plain granulated sugar until caramelized. The ginger-infused cream is then added into the boiling caramelized sugar, salted, and bang-go! Ginger caramel!

Our last addition – macadamia nuts. They add texture and crunch. Their nutty buttery flavor hits at the end of each bite. We keep them plain and simple, and add into the ice cream at the end of the churn.

The results are in…rich and creamy lime ice cream layered with salty ginger caramel finished with the crunch and nuttiness of buttery macadamia nuts. Summer’s favorite flavor? Nah, winter’s favorite flavor.

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 2/1 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!

January 17, 2013

Jasmine Citrus Saffron

We flavor storm a ton of ideas for our weekly flavors each month, and many times they get pushed aside for a better one, or just get caught up in the mix of too many ideas. This week, we revisit one of those flavors that we left behind as it breathes life into this cold winter month, and conjures up images of warmth and color. Let’s get started with this weeks flavor: Jasmine Citrus Saffron

There are countless varieties of rice, all of which have their own special flavor and textural characteristics. Steeping rice in our cream works great, as all those unique flavors inundate the cream. We wanted this flavor to feel light and perfumed, so we decided to use Jasmine rice as one of our base components. Jasmine has a natural sweet floral tone to it that seemed fitting to pair with the floral honey-esk flavors of saffron. We par-cooked the jasmine, then steeped in our cream along with the saffron threads, creating the backbone for our ice cream base. The rice gets strained after the steep, and our base is ready for the churn.

It’s citrus season in California and Florida, and in keeping with our theme to stay warm and light, we wanted to make a citrus syrup to layer into our jasmine/saffron base. The oranges, grapefruit, lemon and limes first get zest-ed, then juiced.

The citrus juice, zest and sugar are heated in a sauce pan and steeped. The zest is strained out, and the simple syrup is reduced into a syrup that is similar to honey or maple syrup in consistency. This tart citrus syrup is cooled and layered into the jasmine/saffron ice cream during packaging.

Bang-go! Sweet, creamy and floral jasmine/saffron infused ice cream with a tart citrus syrup. It’s just another flavor that was almost left behind, but now, will give you summer’s warmth during our coldest months of winter.

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 1/18 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!