Apple Ice Cream – FROZBROZ

October 17, 2013

Apple Peanut Butter

I often think of the impact of this venture has on our kids. My son is an extremely picky eater, but he’s eaten things that he would never dream of even considering were it not translated to him in the form of ice cream. Our boys are around ice cream all of the time, have access to it far more than I ever did, and are developing preferences in flavor that is a little mind boggling. Pretty cool.

On the other hand, they tend to have an equal impact on what we do. Obviously having children means the thought of the nutrition (or lack thereof) in ice cream is always on our minds, which is why we preach moderation, small portions, exceptional quality and big flavors. They also help us remember what is was like to be a kid ourselves, and some of the foods that we might have forgotten. Enter, Apples and Peanut Butter.

Another apple flavor wasn’t in the plans for this fall, but in my quest to get my son a healthy snack – apples and peanut butter came into the fray. Almost instantly he and my wife turned to me and said – “this should be an ice cream flavor”. They were right. Shall we?

For this flavor, I chose to bypass whole apples, in favor of Apple Cider. I’ve already hinted at my fandom of Hoch’s apples, and their cider is coming from high quality apples which means it’s hard to go wrong.

The challenge of this particular ice cream flavor was making an apple flavored ice cream without fruit in it. To accomplish that goal, cider was reduced with sugar to provide both the tart apple flavor and the sugar source for the cream base.

I chose a fantastic natural peanut butter to swirl into the cream, but it was too oily and thick to go into the ice cream base on its own. The peanut butter was combined with cream and a little bit of sugar to thin it out a bit and make a peanut butter sauce to be swirled into the cream base.

Pretty straightforward really, but bursting with flavor. Tart apple ice cream swirled with ribbons of salty natural peanut butter. Evoking the very snack we all knew and loved as kids – and probably as adults too.

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 10/18/13 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!

October 3, 2013

Red Hot Candied Apple

Its apple season, and as we rifle through our apple recipe list it becomes a bigger challenge every year to create new apple flavors. Especially considering we love love love some of our old ones. This year it was time to tackle the candied apple.

The classic cinnamon candy flavor on a candied apple – one you might also know from red hots candy or sticks of gum is Ceylon cinnamon, which is not the cinnamon most of us are used to eating in baked goods and desserts. That would be Cassia. Some call Ceylon “true cinnamon” even though its probably usurped by Cassia in usage. It’s easy to confuse the two, but their flavors could not be more different. In order to make sure this flavor accurately and truly represents that cinnamon candy flavor, we utilized Ceylon in several forms. You cannot discern the two by looking at them, but I’m going to include a picture of Ceylon cinnamon anyway. 🙂

First, the apples. We chose these beauties from Hoch orchard, diced them up, tossed them with brown sugar, butter and powdered Ceylon, and roasted them in the oven to concentrate their flavor and squeeze out the water (as we do). Then they were tossed with a little cane sugar at the end to provide a slight crunch. Parents, if you are looking for a healthy, and easy snack/almost candy/dessert for your kids (or yourself) – just these roasted apples will do the trick. But I digress, back to making ice cream.

Next, the syrup. We made our basic cinnamon syrup, but using Ceylon cinnamon instead of Cassia. For fun and for some color, I dissolved some red hots into the mix. You know, to make it legit.

The cream is made with our regular cane sugar base and infused with more ceylon cinnamon powder. The roasted apples are tossed in at the end of the churn, and the syrup is layered in as the ice cream is packed into the pint. The result is an ice cream laced with levels of ceylon cinnamon invoking that “red hot” flavor, and tart roasty chunks of apple speckled throughout each bite.

There you have it – Red Hot Candied Apple alongside our red hot new labels!

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 10/4/13 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!

September 27, 2012

Oat Granola with Caramel Apples

The autumnal equinox has now past, so we have officially moved into Fall. The weather outside is showing it too, with twenty and thirty degree temperature fluctuations between night and day. The sun is rising later and setting sooner, which makes us all antsy to get out and get the most out of our days while we can. One of those great fall traditions that I shared with my family was hitting up the local apple orchard for picking, sipping cider, and if we were lucky, chowing a caramel apple. And that’s the inspiration for this weeks FrozBroz flavor: Oat Granola with Caramel Apples. Lets get to it!

My three year old son is crazy for granola and yogurt, which pretty much makes it a morning staple at our house with the addition of some sort of fruit. Fruit and granola go hand in hand, so I thought it would make a nice base flavor for this weeks ice cream.

Our granola is comprised of rolled oats, almonds, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, flax seeds, honey, brown sugar, oil, cinnamon and vanilla.

Everything gets tossed together and baked on a parchment lined baking sheet at a low temperature. It warms the house, and the aroma reeks of Fall.

This granola gets thrown into our brown sugar ice cream base and steeps over night. During the steeping process, the oats, seeds, and nuts break down and soften up releasing their starches into the ice cream base. After the granola gets pressed through a fine mesh strainer, the result is an ice cream base packed with oat starch, making for an ultra rich granola flavored ice cream.

Apples! Hoch Orchard Organic Gala Apples to be precise. I’ve found that I really dig Gala apples when making ice cream. As we always preach, one of our biggest challenges with fruit is getting out moisture content so it’s not icy the creams. Not that Galas aren’t moist, but they have a classic sweet apple flavor and when cooked down or baked, their juices condense with that powerfully sweet apple flavor.

And that’s just what we do with them. The apples get pealed, diced and tossed with a little butter, brown sugar, cinnamon and vanilla. They’re placed on a parchment lined sheet pan and slow roasted in the oven until dehydrated and condensed in to soft apple pillow chunkers. Caramel time!

So we make a traditional caramel starting with just plain sugar and a little water. It gets boiled down until it turns an amber color and starts smoking a bit, at which point we add in our cream, stir, and that’s it! We have caramel!

We pour the hot caramel over our roasted apple chunkers and here’s what you get. Caramel Apple Chunkers! They get tossed into the ice cream at the end of the churn.

The final result is a rich creamy granola flavored ice cream with chewy caramel apple chunks. And that’s the beginning of Fall in a scoop.

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 on Friday 9/28 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally and give us feedback or else 🙂 . Good luck!

October 6, 2011

Apple Crisp with Sharp Cheddar

At some point while I was in high school I learned of the apple pie and sharp cheddar combination. I was at a family dinner at my grandparents house when one of my uncles sat down at the table with a piping hot piece of my Grandmother’s freshly made apple pie – with a big slice of cheese slowly melting over the top.

Being used to only eating Apple pie with ice cream, this completely blew my mind. Apple pie with…cheese? I had to try it. Once I did – I was hooked. It was a flavor combination that was relatively foreign to me at the time, but as I grew older and realized how well fruit and cheese went together, it all made sense.

In this batch, we used some gorgeous Wolf River heirloom apples from our pal Slim LeDuc.

I don’t know what it is about gnarly looking fruit trees, but I like to imagine that the flavor of the fruit is so great it overwhelms the plant.

These babies were large and nice for slicing up and baking, but had thin skin and made for great eating on their own as well.

It was my first experience with Wolf River apples, and their sweet flavor lived up to their large size.

The apples were diced, tossed in cinnamon and sugar, and roasted in the oven to concentrate their flavor and reduce their water content.

These were very snack-able.

Since we’ve obviously already strayed from the traditional apple pie route, i chose to make more of a “crisp” topping to throw in the ice cream with the apples – except this one is heavily concentrated with crushed, roasted pecans instead of the more commonly used oats.

And there’s much larger chunks than in traditional apple crips, to ensure there are some substantial bites in the ice cream.

Last but not least, rougly grated and chopped Sharp Wisconsin Cheddar cheese is added. The cheddar provides a quick tangy back drop to the ice cream, and pairs incredibly well with both the apples and the pecan crisp. Our Wisconsin blood has us constantly striving to find more ways to get dairy into your dairy.

Cheesy.

The end result is a fantastic ice cream, filled with roasted heirloom apples, crisp pecan crust, and good old Wisconsin cheese. Hard to beat.

You can win one of two available pints this week, 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 (10/7/2011) at 4pm and will announce them on our facebook page. Our only condition is you must be able to pick it up here in Minneapolis. Good luck!