FROZBROZ – Page 5 – Minneapolis Craft Ice Cream

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!

May 28, 2015

Bananas Foster

If you haven’t noticed, we’ve been on a major banana kick lately. It just works so fantastically well in ice cream – flavor, texture, all of it. So for this week’s flavor we go back to an old favorite dessert of both of ours – Bananas Foster. The cinnamon, the brown sugar, caramelized bananas, rum – it’s a tough combo to beat. Here’s our version in ice cream form.

First – the syrup. In traditional bananas foster the rum is typically used mostly for show at the end – to create a big flame up in the pan, garner some “oohs and aahs”, and put the finishing touches on caramelization. But the flavors are really about the brown sugar and cinnamon. So this syrup is just that – an invert syrup made with brown sugar, and cinnamon – and finished with a touch of rum.

Lest we forget the bananas. They need to be very ripe – almost overripe. Like we’ve done in all our previous banana flavors, the foundation of this ice cream is pretty much the same. The bananas get roasted and caramelized in the oven to maximize the flavor and are then pureed into the cream. The puree is added to an ice cream base that uses brown sugar instead of regular sugar and a touch of cinnamon as well.

We’re pretty in love with this banana ice cream base. Once we’ve given it a spin, the cinnamon rum syrup is swirled in at the end.

The final scoop: a silky roasted brown sugar banana ice cream decorated with ribbons of cinnamon rum syrup.

Bananas Foster Ice Cream

Brown Sugar Cinnamon Syrup Ingredients:

2 Cups Brown Sugar
1 Tablespoon Cinnamon
1 Cup Water
1 Tablespoon rum

Ice Cream Ingredients:

2 Ripe Bananas
2 tablespoons melted butter
2 Cups Heavy Cream
1 Cup Whole Milk
3/4 Cup Brown Sugar plus more for dusting bananas
2 Eggs
1 tsp cinnamon
1 teaspoons salt
1/2 Cup Cinnamon Syrup (recipe above)

Instructions:

1. Prepare the syrup (make ahead of time and chill): Combine the brown sugar, cinnamon and water in a heavy bottom pot and place on burner over medium/high heat. Bring to slow boil and then reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes. 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.

2. Prepare the ice cream: Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Chop the bananas into 1/2 inch chunks and toss with a the melted butter until coated. Place on sheet pan and dust with brown sugar. Place in oven and roast for approx 10-15 minutes or until bananas are starting to carmelize. Puree with the one cup of whole milk you will be using for the ice cream base and set aside.

Crack the eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk fully. Add brown sugar and whisk until sugar and eggs are combined. Add cream, banana puree, cinnamon and salt and whisk again until all are fully incorporated.

Place ice cream base in a pot over medium heat, stirring continuously. Continue to heat 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) and then place in a container, cover, and chill in refrigerator overnight.

3. Churn ice cream base in ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions. Place the ice cream into container and swirl in the cinnamon syrup. Freeze in a tightly covered container for at least 4 hours, preferably overnight if you can wait. Then, 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 5/29/15 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!

May 21, 2015

Peanut Butter and Bacon

Have you ever had a burger with peanut butter and bacon? I hadn’t until recently, and it was shockingly delicious. So shocking delicious that I thought it would make for a shockingly delicious ice cream. Turns out, it is! Let’s get started with this week’s flavor – Peanut Butter and Bacon.

Organic peanut butter. Creamy organic peanut butter. Very creamy organic peanut butter. It’s all of those things, and it is what we are using to make our peanut butter base. For this flavor, I decided to use a brown sugar base to add more depth and caramel tones. The peanut butter is added to the base and pasteurized by cooking to 165 degrees F. Just like adding regular butter to our ice cream, the added fat from the peanut butter tends to separate. If not emulsified, the ice cream will leave a film on your mouth and on the utensil you use to eat it. To emulsify, the ice cream base gets run through a blender on high speed. After an ice bath cool down, the ice cream is ready to churn.

Not before preparing our bacon though. Not just bacon. Candied bacon. I chose to candied the bacon, for one, because after all, it is going into ice cream. Secondly, I want to get a relatively hard layer on the outside of the meats, so the ice cream doesn’t soften it over time, making it chewy and unpalatable. FYI, nitrate free bacon here. Thick cut deliciousness. The bacon is given a rub down with brown sugar. In to the oven until caramelized. I like to cool my bacon on a wire rack to achieve a full crunch factor. Once cooled, the bacon is chopped up and is ready to toss into the peanut butter ice cream at the end of the churn.

The finished product results in an intensely creamy peanut butter ice cream with sweet and salty bits of candied bacon. It’s shockingly delicious!

Peanut Butter and Bacon

1 # Bacon, thick cut
1/3 cup Brown Sugar

2 cups Heavy Cream
1 cup Milk
1/2 cup Brown Sugar
1/2 cup Peanut Butter, creamy
2 Eggs
1 1/8 teaspoons Sea Salt

Instructions:

1. Candied Bacon(makes enough for the ice cream and extra to eat!): Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Line a sheet pan with foil. In a bowl, toss the bacon with 1/3 cup brown sugar until evenly coated. Lay bacon on sheet pan in a single layer. Bake in oven for 30-40 minutes until crisp. Check bacon periodically after 25 minutes to make sure it doesn’t burn. Remove from oven, and move bacon slices to wire rack to cool. Once cool, freeze bacon, and then chop frozen bacon into 1/4 inch bits.

2. Make ice cream base: Crack eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk fully. Add brown sugar and whisk. Add heavy cream, milk, peanut butter and salt. Whisk until ingredients are combined. Peanut butter will break up and incorporate as the base is heated in step 3.

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 and place half of the base in a blender (***DANGER! BE CAREFUL BLENDING HOT LIQUIDS***). Blend on high for 20 seconds. Pour into a clean bowl. Repeat blending process with remaining ice cream base. Cool blended 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 cup of candied bacon 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 5/22/15 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!