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Azuki Red Bean

It’s not very often that we make a flavor with only a one ingredient add-in to our ice cream base. For one, it’s just not challenging enough, and two, it’s kinda boooooring. The reality is, flavors on their own like chocolate, strawberry and vanilla aren’t that boring. According to the International Ice Cream Association, these three flavors fall within the top four most popular ice cream flavors in the world. Sometimes our flavor ideas get too convoluted, and we feel the need to go back to where we started. And that’s just what I did this week. I went back to the root of my idea: Azuki Red Bean Ice Cream; because in the end, it’s another great flavor on it’s own, just like chocolate, strawberry and vanilla.

Want to talk about convoluted? This is one of those flavors I’ve been mulling around in my brain for about two months now. I write it on paper. Look at it. Dream about it. Talk to myself about it. It has consumed me at times, so I put it aside and come back when it feels right.

It’s right now. All by itself. Here we go…

 

 

 

Azuki Beans! Purchased these at Minneapolis’s finest Asian grocery: United Noodles .

They get soaked for 24 hours, rinsed and into a pot of cold water. We bring to a boil and simmered until fully cooked and falling apart.

 

 

 

 

Fully Cooked Azuki beans get strained and then go back into a sauce pan with sugar and a pinch of salt. This mixture gets cooked down into a sweet paste.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“An” – Sweet bean paste that is widely used in East Asian desserts. It can be eaten as is, stuffed into pastries and about a million other preparations; or in our case, stirred into our ice cream base. It’s texture is coarse, and has a unique fruity/nutty/earthy flavor. When mixed into the base the flavor is reminiscent of a strawberry ice cream.

 

 

 

 

 

Another ice cream flavor that’s great on it’s own… FrozBroz Azuki Red Bean Ice Cream

 

 

 

As we do every week, we’ll be giving away two pints of this flavor. Just leave a comment on our facebook page to be entered into the drawing. If you don’t have a facebook account, leave a comment right here on the blog. We’ll draw two winners on Friday afternoon (4/13/2012) at 4pm and will announce them on our facebook page (or email you if you’re comment resides here). Our only conditions are you must be able to pick it up here in Minneapolis, and be willing to give us a little feedback that can be shared with everyone else. Good luck! Also – again, please don’t forget about our Indiegogo fundraising – we’ve at the halfway pointdays and need all the help we can get! http://www.indiegogo.com/frozbroz?a=446076

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Baklava with Foxy Nutz and Salty Pomegranate Caramel

As we mentioned last week, we’ve been wanting to collaborate with some of our super-talented local food compadres, and last week, we did just that with Sheela Namakkal and her ultra in your face chocolate concoctions. This week, another one of kind talent, Erica Strait of Foxy Falafel  brings her genius to our world of craft ice cream. Erica is turning out some of the best Falafel these twin cities have to offer using local and organic ingredients whenever possible; Falafel topped with green tahini, humus and cucumber mint yogurt. Make you thirsty? Wash it down with a cup of her homemade Kombucha. Never had it? You best check her twitter feed(@foxyfalafel) or Facebook  page to see when and where you can catch her next at your local farmers market. Look out, because soon Foxy will be mobile with her newly purchased food truck.

Straight, or should I say Strait out of the gate, Erica had a goldmine of ideas, each consisting of multiple components. By the time I had my head wrapped around something, she threw in a couple more. Note to self…I’ll be calling Foxy next time I encounter a creative block. We were able to piece together more than one these ideas and come together as a whole in what FrozBroz calls Baklava with Foxy Nutz and Salty Pomegranate Caramel.

We ended up starting with these walnuts she makes…

 

 

I call them Foxy Nutz. They’re baked with egg whites, star anise, sugar, salt and a few other secret spices. The result is everything you want a nut to be; light, sweet, salty and spicy. There is a clean airiness to these nuts that is unprecedented. They’re going in at the end of the churn.

 

 

One of Erica’s original thoughts was an orange vanilla baklava, which morphed into the actual flavor of our ice cream base. I loved the idea of a baklava ice cream, but I knew the baked Phyllo wouldn’t hold up in the cream.

 

 

 

So, how do we make this work? I decided to butter up some Phyllo and bake it off in the oven. This can’t be a bad start, right?

 

 

 

 

Next, I warmed our cream. Tossed in some orange zest, cinnamon stick and cloves. And then, chopped up the baked buttery Phyllo and tossed that into the cream as well for a good ‘ol fashioned steeping. To my satisfaction, the cream absorbed the flavor and starches from the Phyllo, giving the base a baklava-esk flavor and an ultra rich texture. After the steep, we strain out all solids and our base is ready to rock ‘n roll into the mixer.

 

 

 

There were a couple of flavors Foxy threw out that involved pomegranate, and I really wanted to use it, because it’s something I hadn’t considered using in ice cream before. We both agreed that a salty pomegranate caramel would pair nicely with the flavors of the baklava cream base.

To make the caramel, I started with a 100% pure pomegranate juice(seen here) and reduced it down 3-4 times into a concentrate.

 

 

 

 

 

The concentrate then gets added to the caramel as it’s boiling down. The caramel gets a good salting, and after it’s cooled, it’s ready for layering into the pints during packaging.

 

 

 

 

Extremely smooth Baklava base, with sweet and salty spiced walnuts layered with the tartness of the salty pomegranate caramel.

Foxy Frozbroz unite!

Another flavor you can’t find anywhere else: Baklava with Foxy Nutz and Salty Pomegranate Caramel.

Want to try it for yourself?

 

As we do every week, we’ll be giving away two pints of this flavor. Just leave a comment on our facebook page to be entered into the drawing. If you don’t have a facebook account, leave a comment right here on the blog. We’ll draw two winners on Friday afternoon (3/30/2012) at 4pm and will announce them on our facebook page (or email you if you’re comment resides here). Our only conditions are you must be able to pick it up here in Minneapolis, and be willing to give us a little feedback that can be shared with everyone else. Good luck! Also – don’t forget about our Indiegogo fundraising – we’ve got 43 days to go and need all the help we can get! http://www.indiegogo.com/frozbroz?a=446076

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Apricot Parmesan – Fan Flavor Contest No. 1

Well, our first ever “Fan Flavor Contest”, is in the books. The winner got a stylin’ FrozBroz T-shirt, but more importantly we made a batch of their flavor and gave them a pint of it. Another lucky fan gets a pint as well. Based on the number of suggestions we got, we would have to say, it was a success. Thanks to all who made suggestions – they were all fantastic ideas. Stay tuned to our Facebook and Twitter pages as we will be announcing more contests in the weeks and months to come. It was really great to see our fans’ creative minds at work. A big congratulations to Ann Harste who was our first ever winner with her suggestion of Apricot Parmesan.

Let’s get to work…

 

From the beginning we had thoughts of apricot marmalade. We just weren’t sure if we wanted to layer the marmalade in,  or mix it right into our ice cream base. Either way, marmalade it was.

These are beautiful Turkish apricots purchased at our favorite Seward Coop.

To get the marmalade going, we diced them up, covered with water and brought them to a simmer.

After simmering for awhile, we added sugar and continued simmering until we ended up with…

 

 

Apricot marmalade!

This is gold. The depth of flavor here is intensely apricot, as one might expect. In the end, we decided to mix the marmalade into the base, and layer into the pints as well. Double bonus!

 

 

 

Having Wisconsin in our blood, we’ve incorporated a variety of cheeses into many of our flavors, including Parmesan. In our Olive Oil Parmesan ice cream we finely grated the cheese so that it would almost disappear in the base. For this flavor, we wanted to get a nice shaving to cut through the sweetness of the marmalade.

 

 

So that is what we did…shaved it. Sartori StraVeccio Parmesan from Plymouth, Wisconsin. It’s fruity, nutty and has some roasted caramel tones to it. To add a little more nuttiness, we added a pinch of fresh ground nutmeg to the base. The Parmesan shavers get tossed in at the end of the churn.

 

 

 

 

And there you have it folks. Our first ever “Fan Flavor Contest” comes to a close with Ann’s suggestion of Apricot Parmesan Frozbroz style. Congrats Ann, and excellent suggestion!

 

 

 

Don’t forget about our Indiegogo fundraising – we’ve got 44 days to go and need all the help we can get! http://www.indiegogo.com/frozbroz?a=446076

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A quick update: Ann got us her feedback in no time, and we thought we’d share it – but we can only take 50% of the credit since the idea was all Ann 🙂

Wow you guys! Could my prize be changed to a lifetime supply? Besides more for us, I’d like to serve some to all the people who wrinkled their noses at me when I told them the flavor.

Both apricot and Parmesan have the potential to dominate, but you interpreted the idea in a way I didn’t think of. Your ice cream recipe showcases both flavors while keeping them in balance with each other.

A truly decadent ice cream to savor slowly in order to appreciate the flavors and textures going on. I love to eat ice cream when it is like a treasure hunt to find all the goodies hidden in it. The apricot marmalade had an intensely deep and concentrated flavor and a great sticky texture with pieces of candied apricot. Finding the crumbles of Parmesan, which gave bursts of salty, tangy flavor, was my favorite part of the treasure hunt. And of course the body of the ice cream itself was luscious and creamy, with a hint of the apricot.

We all loved it.

My son started eating it and said “That’s really good tasting Parmesan!” My husband took one bite and exclaimed “OH, that is good! I didn’t think it would taste like this!”

To serve it, I made a shortbread crunch to sprinkle over the ice cream to replicate a favorite combination of mine which is a shortbread cookie topped with a cheese and something really sweet, like apricot or caramelized sugar. – Flavor Contest #1 Winner, Ann Harste

 

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