Erik – Page 23 – FROZBROZ

February 2, 2012

Oat with Maple Brown Sugar

Since we got the breakfast creams started last week, we decided, why not keep a good thing going. This is our second installment of breakfast flavors that are really inspired by the season. The sun is still low in the sky, and all anyone wants to do is lay in bed a little longer, drink coffee, and slowly work your way to making a comforting breakfast. Of course, all while wearing pajamas.

Oats are not something that we’ve used in our ice cream before. They are high in starch content, and in our past experiences, vegetables high is starch pose bigger challenges to balance texture. In the case of oats, we have found a starch match made in heaven for our ice cream.

These are the organic regular rolled oats that we purchase at our haunt, The Seward Coop, from Whole Grain Milling Company located in Welcome, MN.

Welcome to our ice cream base oats. This is when the magic starts to happen. We slowly bring our base to a simmer with the oats, and then allow to steep for a few hours. During this cooking/steeping process the oats release their starches into our ice cream base; the same starches that make oatmeal so delicious and creamy. The base gets strained through a fine sieve before getting churned in the maker.

The oats provide a subtle flavor profile that is so familiar yet is almost forgotten because of the texture take over of it’s starches.

This is Wild Country Maple Syrup from Lutsen, MN. We incorporate it with some brown sugar and bring it to a quick simmer.

The uncaramelized maple brown sugar sauce is reminiscent of the graininess that brown sugar and maple syrup have when stirred into hot oatmeal. We layer the sauce into the pints.

The starch match made in heaven results in a rich, dense, ultra smooth ice cream with a sweet mapley sauce layered in.

Like to try some? 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 (2/03/2012) at 4pm and will announce them on our facebook page. 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!

January 19, 2012

Green Tea with Orange Shortbread Bars

Winter in Minnesota this year has brought us milder than usual temperatures, but this week is a different story. Winter is finally showing face and with the temperatures falling, what better way to celebrate than with some FrozBroz ice cream. This cold weather got us thinking about hot beverages, and in particular, hot tea. With all of the herbal teas out there, we decided to start with a classic in the ice cream world, and add a little orange twist.

This is Matcha Green Tea from the Tea Source in St. Paul. They provide the Twin Cities with the highest quality teas from around the world. Matcha is a Japanese ceremonial tea which has very complex vegetal qualities to it, which in our minds makes it great for ice cream.

The leaves of Matcha are ground into a silky powder.

We steep this Matcha powder in hot cream, and although we can not be sure, we believe that most other ice cream makers making green tea ice cream skip this step. Instead they incorporate the powder directly into the base. Remember those complex vegetal notes? Steeping brings those out BIG TIME!

And here’s the orange twist! Citrus is in season, so we decided to rock these orange shortbread bars, made with butter, flour, sugar, orange and orange zest. They offer a great balance to the herbalness of the tea ice cream. The acidity of these bars cuts right through.

Come celebrate Winter with us and have a little Green Tea with Orange Shortbread Bars.

How about a free pint? 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 (1/20/2012) at 4pm and will announce them on our facebook page. 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!

January 5, 2012

Grasshopper Chocolate Chunk

The holidays have passed, and so we move on to a new year filled with more lost promises of better eating. Well, maybe they’re not lost. Who ever said you needed to pound 15 Christmas cookies a day for 2 weeks straight? It’s just time to regulate our intake.

For most of us, there are still a ton of leftovers, and with leftovers, there are the great memories of last year. One of those great memories at our family’s house is grasshopper ice cream, and unless my brother overstayed his welcome, there will likely be a few more scoops left in the freeze.

So lets do it…FrozBroz style – Grasshopper Chocolate Chunk

What is grasshopper? As a cocktail, it is a mix of Creme de Menthe, Creme de Cacao and fresh cream shaken up on the rocks and then strained into a glass. So we’re pretty much making a cocktail ice cream. Bye bye new years resolution number 3.

This is Creme de Menthe. It is what makes a grasshopper a grasshopper…and green. It traditionally gets it’s color from the mint leaves used to flavor the liqueur. It will clean your sinuses and warm your heart. Along with the chocolate liqueur/Creme de Cacao, we add them both to our vanilla base at the end of churning.

Meet Theo. Theo is the only Organic Fair Trade Chocolate maker in the US. We love organic and we love Fair Trade. This 70% cacao bar is rich with deep chocolate flavor. It gets broken into chunks and added in with the liqueurs at the end of the churn.

Just another lost promise to keep the memories alive. Grasshopper Chocolate Chunk.

Like to win a free pint? Per the weekly drill, 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 (1/6/2012) at 4pm and will announce them on our facebook page. 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!

December 22, 2011

Sandbakkel with Grape Muscado Pink Peppercorn Jam

Sandbakkels are one of those Christmas cookie traditions that really embody my memory of the holidays growing up. Tables lined every wall in my grandmothers three season porch where boxes were filled with sugar cookies, spritz, rosettes, sandbakkels, krumkake and lefse among others. They are fundamentally made with the same ingredients, but the sandbakkels, after sitting in the cold air, had a substantial buttery crunch like none of the others. It is this and the reminiscence of our grandmothers cookies that bring us to another FrozBroz holiday flavor. Making sandbakkels requires some grandmotherly love.

That’s why we are going to get things started with Lard! These cookies wouldn’t be what they are without it. Cows make butter and pigs make lard. Fortunately for all of us, this recipe has BOTH. The lard gets creamed with butter, sugar, eggs, flour and vanilla.

There are a few spices that can really distinguish one holiday cookie from another. Nutmeg, cinnamon and allspice come to mind. Here we use Cardamom. These pods are cracked open and the seeds are ground in a spice grinder, then added to the dough.

Ok, for those of you who are unfamiliar with Sandbakkels, these are the molds that they are baked in. I mean, come on, these cookies are so cool that they require a special tin for each individual cookie.

The dough gets pressed into tins with one of the broz big chub thumbs, then baked off until golden brown.

Sandbakkels! These get tossed into a vanilla base with a little brown butter at the end of the churn. Now this flavor would be great on it’s own, but we just had to jam a little more holiday cheer into this one.

Our friend Heidi Skoog over at Serious Jam is cooking up small batches of jams and jellies like Strawberry Balsamic with Black Pepper, Blueberry Bourbon Sage and Raspberry Ruhbarb Pimms. For this weeks flavor, she made us a Grape Muscado Pink Peppercorn Jam that we drizzled in layers while packaging. This jam offers a gentle twist when paired with grandmothers Sandbakkels.

Not to mention, Serious Jam looks seriously awesome in our ice cream!

How about a free pint? Per the weekly drill, 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 (12/23/2011) at 4pm and will announce them on our facebook page. 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!

December 8, 2011

7 Layer Bar

Bars Anyone? Pretty sure if you’re attending a holiday gathering around here, you are going to be asked this question at least once. This is the Midwest, and now that I think about it, you’ll probably be asked this question at any gathering you make an appearance at. Bars are a tradition in these parts, and especially around the holidays. Some call them Magic Bars, but my mother always called them 7 Layer Bars – magic in your mouth.

Only thing is…we’re not making bars. You might contend that our graham cracker crust resembles a bar. After all, it is made with butter, brown sugar and graham crackers

Speaking of butter…Have we mentioned how much we love the butter from Hope Creamery? Located in Hope, MN, it’s one of the only independently owned creameries in the state churning out butter in small batches the old-fashioned way. Kind of like how we make our butterscotch to layer into our ice cream…

Butter and brown sugar incorporate and get simmered down until fully caramelized. We add a little cream, reduce, and then finish off with vanilla and salt.

Butterscotch made the old fashioned way.

Before we get the layering of butterscotch into the ice cream, lets talk chunkage. We use our cocoa truffles for few of our flavors. They’re made with 85% cocoa and cream, then dusted with cocoa powder. These get chopped up and added in at the end of the churning process along with…

Candied walnuts. These beauties are toasted and then candied with sweet and condensed milk and tossed with sea salt.

Let’s see, what else are we forgetting?

Coconut! After much thought, and the feedback of a few FrozBroz fans, we decided to leave out the coconut and use coconut milk in our ice cream base instead.

The result is a rich creamy coconut ice cream with chunks of graham cracker crust, cocoa truffles, candied walnuts laced with old fashioned butterscotch – 7 Layer Bar

How about a free pint for the holidays? 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 (12/9/2011) at 4pm and will announce them on our facebook page. 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!