Artisan Ice Cream – Page 10

July 26, 2012January 29, 2024

Cherry Pit Creme Fraiche with Rainier Cherry and Lemon Thyme

The summer of berries continue. This week is probably the peak for Rainier Cherries, so if you haven’t had any yet, get out and get some. We got ours at the Seward Co-op. While I have a love for all varieties, these are my perennial favorite, partially because we don’t see them for long when and if they get here. That isn’t to say that locally grown cherries aren’t fantastic, but I was in a pinch this week and couldn’t resist the chance to work with peak season Rainiers.

I only recently found out that cherry pits aren’t necessarily garbage, and can be used to give desserts a more intense cherry flavor with an almond-like twist when cracked and roasted and steeped or boiled into a syrup. Interestingly enough, it turns out the cherry pits are often used to make cheap almond extract which I always thought had tasted like cherries, and now I know why.

“BUT SOMEONE TOLD ME THEY’RE POISONOUS”, you might be saying. While this is technically true (they do contain a tiny amount of cyanogenic glycosides) you would need to eat a ton of them to get sick, and roasting or boiling them greatly reduces this risk (from what we’ve read). They are more commonly used in cooking around the country than you might think.

For this flavor, we boiled them into a simple syrup and steeped it with the pits.

While the cherry pit syrup was steeping, the cherries were cooked down with a little sugar and then steeped with some sprigs of lemon thyme.

The base was made with Creme Fraiche to substitute for some of the regular cream which added a nice sourness and paired wonderfully with the almondy cherry pit syrup.

Right before churning, a little fresh minced lemon thyme was added directly to the base as well.

The result is a dense cherry flavored ice cream with an incredibly silky texture from the creme fraiche and a nice tart kick from the sweet Rainier cherries and Lemon Thyme. Beautiful if we do say so ourselves.

Rockin’.

Only two will have it, my precious. 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 (7/27/2012) 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 agree to give us a little feedback that can be shared with everyone else. And we’re serious about that. We’ll hunt you down for feedback. Get your food critic pants on – you might be the lucky winner and inquiring minds want an objective opinion. Good luck!

July 19, 2012

Port Black and Blueberry

Thanks to a fantastic season here in Minnesota, we are still rolling out new berry flavors. This week we’re combining the summer’s newest arrival, blackberries, with the steadily ripening blueberries. To boot, we’re throwing down a little port into the mix to really enhance the berry berriness of these berries.

Hoch Orchard Organic Blackberrries! Hoch, located in the hills of La Crescent, MN, is producing strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, cherries, apricots, plums and apples. You will find a variety of Hoch friuts and berries at your local Coop here in Minneapolis.

These blackberries are sweet, juicy and firm, the way blackberries are suppose to taste.

We were fortunate enough to score these gorgeous blueberries from a family friend’s garden back in our home state of Wisconsin. It didn’t take long to get them off the bush and into our ice cream.

The blackberries and blueberries get smashed up in a sauce pan, along with this port…

Graham Six Grapes port pairs perfectly with these dark berries. It’s bold, robust, and ripe with it’s own deep berry flavors.

They all get simmered down with brown sugar into thick jammy reduction that gets tossed right into the ice cream at the end of the churn. The result…

An intense black and blueberry ice cream with port.
FrozBroz Port Black and Blueberry ice cream!

It can be yours.. 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 (7/20/2012) 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 agree to give us a little feedback that can be shared with everyone else. Good luck!

July 12, 2012

Deconstructed Blueberry Pie w/Charred Vanilla Bean

As a kid, my family would often spend a day of our summer vacation picking wild blueberries along a railroad track in northern Wisconsin, south of Hayward. We’d endure loads of mosquito bites and hoards of woodticks to earn a few gallon pails full of them, that would usually net a pie or two after we finished snacking. It was always one of my favorite pies, partially due to its rarity, but mostly because of the incredible sweetness and flavor combined with the dark blue hue of the macerated berries. I’ve mentioned these pie memories before – they are landmarks on my brain.

I hoped to get my hands on some of those very wild blueberries for this flavor, but I got the next best thing, which was these beauties from our recent fave Svihel farms from Foley, MN.

You might remember a few weeks ago when we released the Smoked Bourbon Vanilla Bean ice cream that we mentioned some discoveries while experimenting with vanilla beans on the grill. One of those discoveries was a charred version which we knew would give us a nice option so we preserved it for future use.

It paired wonderfully with the pie concept and made a nice dark fleck in the ice cream.

The blueberries were reduced with sugar, lemon, cinnamon and cardamom to create the “pie filling”.

Then there was the pie crust. Similar to the deconstructed pecan pie flavor we made last fall, the pie crust was baked off and broken up to go into the charred vanilla ice cream as an add in – floating throughout the pint.

The blueberry filling was layered into the pint to leave thick, ribbons of sticky blueberry jam.

It can be yours.. 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 (7/13/2012) 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 agree to give us a little feedback that can be shared with everyone else. Good luck!

June 28, 2012

Salt Bagel with Cream Cheese and Honey

Our friends at Nordeast Nectars are beginning to harvest honey again and we’re going to do our damndest to get this liquid gold into our ice cream as much as possible. I’ve been wanting to do a salt bagel and cream cheese flavor for awhile, and when our beekeeper friends announced it was honey time, it seemed like it should also be honey, salt bagel and cream cheese ice cream time.

Angelic? That’s one way to describe the flavor of Nordeast Nectars honey.

Thanks to a quick survey of our followers, we were pointed to St. Paul Bagelry in our search of a good salt bagel. Good indeed. These circles were crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside just like they should be, with salt on the top AND the bottom. Bingo.

Salty.

We sliced and diced them, added a little butter and baked them a bit more to help them hold up in the ice cream.

Oh, and let’s not forget the cream cheese.

The cream cheese and bagels were mixed into the base, and the golden nectar was woven into the cream as it went into the pints.

There you have it. Salt bagel, cream cheese and honey ice cream. Extremely creamy. A little salty and some serious sweet.

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 (6/29/2012) 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!

June 21, 2012

Strawberry Cabernet with Black Pepper

We just couldn’t resist making another strawberry flavor for the second week in a row. The season is nearing it’s close, but we just had too many ideas that we had to showcase one more for you all. And it was this weeks flavor idea, that like others in the past, started out as something different from how it ended. The truth is, we make a brand spanking new flavor every single week, and sometimes the path to success leads us in different directions than originally conceptualized. It could be a minor change, like this weeks, but it may have a palpable affect on how the flavor hits your taste buds. Our ice cream has many parts working together to make sweet love and money in your mouth. Though one could argue that we couldn’t go wrong with a flavor, given the ingredients that we use, but believe us, there are a number of outcomes with every flavor profile that we choose. This weeks flavor is no different, so lets get to work and work through our Strawberry Cabernet with Black Pepper.

Black Peppercorns! They get ground and added to our ice cream base for a backdrop that brings out spice and pairs charmingly with strawberries.

This week we stopped by Linden Hills Farmers Market to pickup these beauteous strawberries grown at Svihel Farms in Foley, MN. They get cleaned up, halved and into the oven at low temperature for a slow roast.

We haven’t used wine in a flavor since we rolled out our Tarragon Beurre Blanc back in October of last year and it was a great success. No different here. We are not wine experts, and would never claim to be, but this bottle poured out flavors of ripe berries and nicely balanced tannins. But lets not get too caught up in drinking this wine, because it’s about to play an integral part in this flavor. We poured the bottle into a sauce pan with sugar and a bay leaf and began the reduction process.

Simmered down, the Cabernet takes on a syrup like consistency and it’s flavors are condensed and power packed.

And this is where my conceptualized idea started changing. I began this adventure with thoughts of a black pepper ice cream with strawberry chunks and a red wine reduction layered in. After reducing the wine to the consistency and flavor I was looking for, I was left with less than what I’d planned for layering into the pints. Plan B…

Might as well toss roasted strawberries in with the Cabernet reduction. This was a good idea! The red wine reduction brought out flavors in those strawberries that I dream about. Seriously people, it took strawberry flavor to an 11 on a 10 point scale. This fruit bomb gets added into our black pepper base at the end of the churn. The result?…

A rich vibrant red ice cream with a strawberry flavor that I have always wanted in a strawberry ice cream. The strawberries and red wine reduction are working in perfect harmony with the black pepper deepening the field and leaving a satisfying peppery finish. This strawberry ice cream is made for strawberry ice cream lovers. It’s what we like to call “money! in! your! mouth!”

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 (6/22/2012) 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!