FROZBROZ – Page 4 – Minneapolis Craft Ice Cream

July 23, 2015

Black Currant Cassis w/Black Pepper

Our friend Heidi Skoog recently picked up a windfall of black currants from the amazing Blue Fruit Farm in Winona, MN. They literally live up to their name by only growing blue fruits. How cool is that? Definitely a place worth visiting for their exotic varieties of berries, including these black currants. I’ll be honest, I’ve never had a black currant that wasn’t dried before, and the fresh black currant is one of the most unique tasting berries I’ve come across. Slightly smoky in flavor, they are almost more savory than sweet. I couldn’t have been more excited to make ice cream with them. For a twist, why not throw in a little Cassis and some black pepper?

The flavor begins by making a jam out of the currants. Its the same jam process we use for everything and in this case will also provide the bulk of the sweetness for the ice cream. Cassis, a black currant liqueur, is added in once the jam is cooled (so as not to lose the flavor) to give it even more dimension.

To make the ice cream, we start with a simple cream base but use only a fraction of the sugar we typically do because the black currant jam is already sweet. The jam is blended directly into the base and gives it a beautiful purplish hue. Fresh cracked black pepper is added while the base is cooked, to infuse a subtle bite into the currant-y cream.

The scoop is a wondefully complex black currant cassis ice cream with a little bite of black pepper.

Black Currant Cassis w/ Black Pepper Ice Cream

Black Currant Cassis jam ingredients:
1 pint black currants (about 1/2 pound)
1 Cup sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon of Cassis liqueur

Ice Cream ingredients:
1 Cup of Milk (whatever fat percentage you prefer)
2 Cups of Heavy Cream
1/2 Cup of sugar
1 Cup of Currant Cassis Jam
1/4 tsp of freshly ground black pepper

Instructions for the Jam: Place a plate in the freezer (this will come in handy in a bit). In a medium saucepan combine the currants 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 the mix until the bubbles subside and the jam appears slightly thickened, somewhere around 15 minutes. To test for doneness, spoon a small amount onto the chilled plate. If jam is gooey and wrinkles when you push your finger into it, it is done. This means it will not be icy in the cream which you do not want. If not, cook and stir a little longer before testing again. Let cool; then add cassis and black pepper when jam is cool. Cover and chill completely until you are ready to make the ice cream.

Instructions for ice cream: Crack eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk fully. Add sugar and currant jam and whisk until fully combined. Add heavy cream, milk, and salt. Whisk again until all ingredients are fully blended. Base will take on the bluish purple color of the currants.

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. Place ice cream is in freezer proof storage container and store ice cream for at least 3 hours, preferably overnight if you can wait.

*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 7/24/15 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!

July 15, 2015

Cream Cheese Pepper Jelly

It was a Saturday not too long ago at our cabin in Wisconsin; a beautiful day. It was late afternoon happy hour, and as always the trove of hors d’oeuvres were laid out on the table; Merkts, crackers, sausage, humus, veggies, olives, pickles, chips, salsa, and a classic that my mother has been eating for as long as I can remember; cream cheese and pepper jelly. It’s this one that hit me. The creaminess of the cream cheese and the subtle tartness and spiciness of the pepper jelly that cuts right through…it’s a wonderful combination. After all of these years of eating it myself, it finally dawned on me that this should be an ice cream flavor. And now it will be. So let’s get to this week’s flavor – Cream Cheese Pepper Jelly

Cream cheese! Plain old awesome cream cheese. It makes the world a better place. Also, it makes for a great ice cream as well. We add it into our standard organic cane sugar ice cream base before pasteurization. It makes for an ultra-rich creamy base that will pair great with the pepper jelly.

Next, we make our pepper jelly starting with green and red bell peppers and jalapenos. The peppers are cleaned and pureed in a food processor with crushed red pepper flakes. Cane sugar and vinegar are added. The only hesitation I had with this flavor was the vinegar in the pepper jelly, but as I mentioned in my opening, it is that subtle tartness from the vinegar that cuts right through the richness of the cream cheese.

The mixture is brought to a boil. Technically this will be a pepper syrup of sorts, because when frozen, we want our syrup to be the consistency of jelly. So instead of adding a jelling agent, we’re going to cook out this syrup to the desired consistency. To do this, we put a plate in the freezer. While the jelly is boiling, we take a spoonful out and pour onto our cold plate. The cold plate chills the jelly immediately, and we’re able to see where the viscosity is at. If it’s too runny, we keep cooking it. If it’s too thick, we pull from the heat, add a little water, and test again. We like to be able to run our finger through the cold syrup and have it wrinkle without too much effort. After the syrup is cooled and the cream cheese base is churned, we swirl in the pepper jelly.

Happy hour hors d’oeuvres in ice cream form. It’s a delightfully creamy cheesy ice cream layered with ribbons of hot pepper jelly. Perfect for a hot summer day at the cabin.

Cream Cheese Pepper Jelly

Pepper Jelly:
1 Red bell pepper, small
1/2 Green bell pepper, small
2 Jalapenos
1 1/2 cup White vinegar
6 cups Cane sugar
1 teaspoon Red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon Sea salt

Ice Cream Base:
2 cups Heavy Cream
1/2 cup Milk
4 oz. Cream cheese
3/4 cup Cane Sugar
2 Eggs
3/4 teaspoon Sea salt

Instructions:

1. Make pepper jelly: Place a plate in the freezer. In food processor, puree all peppers. In a medium saucepan combine pepper puree with remaining ingredients. 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 ice cream base: Crack eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk fully. Add cane sugar and whisk. Add heavy cream, milk, and salt. Whisk until ingredients are combined. Add cream cheese.

3. Cook/pasteurize ice cream base: Over medium heat, whisk or stir base continuously to break up cream cheese. 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.

4. Churn ice cream base in ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions. Swirl in pepper jelly 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 7/17/15 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!

July 8, 2015

Dark and Stormy

Our Facebook fan flavor contest from a few weeks back provided a ton of great flavor ideas and we’ll probably add a few more before summer is over. This week we’re going to go back to the summer cocktail theme using a fan suggestion and visit another great summer drink featuring ginger ale, lime and rum – the Dark and Stormy. For the ice cream version, we made a ginger brown sugar ice cream with candied lime and dark rum syrup.

The most labor intensive part of making this flavor is making the candied lime – so we’ll start there. The lime rind is carefully separated and sliced – then boiled 3 times to remove the bitterness. Once that is done, the lime “zest” is simmered in a simple sugar syrup until tender, tossed with sugar and laid out on a sheetpan to dry.

Then comes the dark rum syrup. It starts with brown sugar and water, which is boiled into a syrup. The dark rum is added at the end once cool to prevent all of the alcohol from burning off. Rum is a sweet liqour that disappears in more sugar, so we want a little of the alcohol to stay in the syrup and round out the flavor.

Last but not least, the ice cream base. To serve as the ginger ale portion of the cocktail, we use brown sugar and fresh grated ginger. It makes for a nice slightly dark and gingery base to hold up the candied lime and rum syrup.

The candied limes are added in at the end of the churn and the rum syrup is swirled in as the ice cream is packed into it’s container.

The scoop is a light and airy brown sugar ginger ice cream studded with candied limes all embraced by a dark rum syrup swirl.

Dark and Stormy Ice Cream Recipe

(makes approx 1-1/2 quarts)

Ingredients:

For Ice Cream:
2C Heavy Cream
1C Milk (use any fat percentage you prefer – higher lends to a creamier base)
2 Eggs
3/4C Brown Sugar
1 Tablespoon of finely grated ginger
1/2 tsp salt

For Syrup:
1C Brown Sugar
1/2C Water
2 Tablespoons of Dark Rum

For Candied Lime:
3 Limes
1C Sugar + Extra for dusting
1C Water

Instructions:

1. Prepare the candied Lime (make 1 day ahead of time): Remove the peels from the limes. Using a sharp knife, carefully remove any thick white pith from lime peel. Cut peel into thin 2-inch-long strips. Place peel in pot and cover with water. Bring to boil and strain, repeat boiling and straining 3 times to remove bitterness from peel. Once boiling has been completed, bring 1 cup of water and 1 cup of sugar to boil. When sugar is dissolved, add strained lime peel and reduce to simmer; cook for approximately 30-45 minutes or until lime peel is tender. Once tender, strain lime peel and toss with sugar to coat, then spread out on sheet pan and let dry completely (will go faster in refrigerator – usually takes about 3-4 hours). Once lime peel is dry chop into small 1/4″ sized pieces and chill in refrigerator until you are ready to churn ice cream.

2. Prepare the syrup (make ahead of time and chill): Combine the brown sugar and water in a heavy bottom pot and place on burner over medium/high heat. Bring to boil and cook until temperature reaches 220 degrees farenheit (you’ll need a candy or high heat digital read thermometer). Watch closely because it can boil over lightning fast. Remove from heat. Let cool to room temperature and then add the rum and stir until incorporated. Chill further in refrigerator until you’re ready to make ice cream. It helps to test some of the syrup in the freezer to make sure it doesn’t get too hard or thick. If it does – simply add a bit of water or rum and heat until you can incorporate it all (or do it while it is still warm).

3. Prepare the ice cream: Crack eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk fully. Add grated ginger, brown sugar and salt and whisk again until all are fully incorporated. Place ice cream mix in heavy pot and cook over medium heat, stirring continuously. Heat ice cream mixture 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.

Churn ice cream base in ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions. Add in 1/2C candied lime in the last 5 minutes of the churning process. The rum syrup is swirled in to the ice cream as you pack it into the container. 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 7/10/15 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 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!