Artisan Ice Cream – Page 6

April 25, 2013

Sumac with Apricot Carrot Jam

This week, it seems appropriate to head back down a path we explored on paper but never really materialized; Sumac. After releasing our Coconut Hibiscus and Lime last week, it felt natural to break out another one of our plant based ice creams. Also, we were flavor-bombed in a Facebook message last week with suggestions like: Cranberry Sumac Sorbet, Wild Rice Pudding with Maple Syrup and Juniper Berry, and Lingonbery-Ginger Snap Swirl. It made it hard not to move some of these ingredients to the top of our list, as they’ve hung in limbo in the past. Andy Wright, we consider those to be damn good suggestions, so just consider yourself an “appreciated flavor genius”, k? But, instead of going down the cranberry sumac sorbet route, we solidified this week’s ice cream flavor into a Sumac with Apricot Carrot Jam. Let’s get it on…

This is a fruiting sumac bush, photo taken at the Hyland Park Reserve in Bloomington, MN(photo cred: unknown). And yes, sumac is the Fall plant we all know so well here in Minnesota that turns fiery red along our highways in September and October. And yes, it’s going into our ice cream. Sumac berries similar to these, but of a different variety, are ground into powder, as shown above, and used quite often in Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cuisine. The ground berries possess a very subtle lemon flavor with some earthy notes that will set a nice backdrop for this week’s flavor. The ground sumac is steeped in our cane sugar ice cream base and strained out before churning.

For the next component, I knew I wanted to utilize these beautiful dried Turkish apricots. It had also been suggested, as of late, that we make a flavor with carrots. Carrots, listen up; we’re just getting started with you; this is only the beginning of a long relationship with you in our ice cream. Had to get that off of my chest. The carrots, together with the apricots, will bring a naturally sweet element to the ice cream, as well as contribute to the driving Mediterranean-esk theme. Everything is falling into place. For the jam, the apricots and carrots get diced and tossed in a sauce pan with water and sugar.

They’re simmered down until soft and caramely, at which time, we used an immersion blender to puree into a jam-like consistency. The apricot carrot jam is layered into the pints during packaging.

Sumac with Apricot Carrot Jam! The sumac provides a subtle backdrop of earthiness, followed by the sweet apricot carrot jam that brings it all together and materializes into something other than old thoughts on paper.

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 4/26 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!

April 18, 2013

Coconut Hibiscus and Lime

A few weeks ago I was enjoying a dinner at a local mexican restaurant when I noticed a hibiscus drink on the menu. I had been kicking around the idea of making a hibiscus ice cream for awhile and this cool, sweet hibiscus tea got my gears turning. After some more research, I discovered this dark red tea is an international favorite, loved in the Phillipines, Middle East and South America. Different cultures have slightly different ways of making it, but all utilize the Hibiscus flower as the main flavor component. However, with the Jamaican kick I’ve been on, my path was already chosen. It turns out Hibiscus tea is so popular in Jamaica that it is actually ordered simply as a Jamaica in some areas of the U.S.

For this flavor, I went back to our vegan friendly/dairy free coconut base. The coconut cream was a perfect backdrop for a Jamaican inspired flavor.

As is often done when this drink is served in Jamaica, i added lime zest to give it a citrus-y kick.

These gorgeous Hibiscus flowers are packed with Vitamin C and are steeped in our coconut cream base to extract all of their bright floral flavors.

The Hibiscus petals dye the ice cream a pretty pink.

The result is a rich, coconut based ice cream, laced with a tangy, floral hibiscus with a zippy finish of lime. Vegan friendly and dairy free.

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 4/19 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!

April 11, 2013

Bee Pollen

It isn’t often that we release a flavor that rides alone – one ingredient – no further augmentations. I can only think of a handful, out of the one hundred or so flavors that we’ve released over the past two years, since starting this here blog. Those that come to mind: Black Walnut, Fennel Pollen, Tomato, and of course, Triple Chocolate. There comes a time when we just want to know how certain flavors taste, on their own, in ice cream. Well, this week is one of those times. We chose one ingredient to ride alone – Bee Pollen!

This is bee pollen. When a worker bee lands on a flower, it gathers the dusty pollen from the plant. This dust sticks to the back of their legs, and the bee then uses it’s head, along with it’s nectar, to pack down the pollen dust, forming these bee pollen granules. They carry the pollen back to the hive where it is used as protein/food for the colony. Bee keepers have devised ways to knock the pollen off of the bees legs as it enters the hive, therefore bringing these pollen granules to market. Bee pollen is readily sold as a nutritional supplement, as it has been said to be very nutritious and claimed to cure certain health problems. Scientific research over the years has not confirmed this.

So now that you know the basics of bee pollen, let’s make ice cream with it, ok? The different colored granules symbolize the variety of plants the bee visited, which will effect it’s unique aroma and flavor. It’s flavor is sweet and nutty. We steeped the pollen in our standard cane sugar ice cream base, give it a generous salting, and strained through a fine mesh strainer before churning. That’s it!

Bee Pollen Ice Cream!

It’s sweet, creamy, nutty, honey-esk. It’s unique! And that’s why we needed to throw this one out there for a good ‘ol solo run.

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 4/12 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!

March 28, 2013

Horchata w/ Cajeta

A few weeks back, we released our Coconut Bar w/ Banana Caramel, a flavor inspired by a mid-winter trip to Mexico and the coconut bar from the gods. This week, it’s another Mexican-inspired flavor, as we craft a rice milk ice cream and a goat milk caramel made with local goat milk from our faves, Singing Hills Goat Dairy. Let’s get started with this week’s flavor: Horchata with Cajeta!

Before we assume that everyone has had Horchata, let me just give you a brief run down. It’s really good and tasty. Ok, are we good then? I mean it, but seriously, Horchata is a beverage that is found in many Latin American countries along with Spain. It’s made in many different ways using either ground rice, seeds, almonds, etc. Probably the most commonly found version of Horchata here in the US is the Mexican version; which utilizes ground rice, water, milk, sugar, cinnamon and sometimes vanilla. For our ice cream base, we used long grain white rice pictured above. We pureed the rice in a blender with our cream, added a few cinnamon sticks and let steep overnight in the refrigerator. We make our organic cane sugar base, add the strained rice cream and a touch of ground cinnamon, and our mix is ready for the churn.

Next, it’s time to make our Cajeta. Cajeta? It’s a Mexican caramel/syrup made by slowly simmering milk and sugar for a long period of time. This isn’t going to be just any ordinary Cajeta though…we’re making a goat milk cajeta with Singing Hills goat milk. Lynne Reeck and Kathryn Wall are Singing Hills’ owners. In our opinions, they are making the best fresh goat cheese around. “Like” them on Facebook, go buy their cheese at Mill City Farmers Market, Fulton Farmers Market, and Kingfield Farmers Market, and check out this great article about them from Heavy Table(Lynne Reeck of Singing Hills Goat Dairy). And please, help support our local farmers.

Thanks to them, and of course Lynne’s sister Nancy, for her door-to-door delivery, we got our hands on a quart of their tasty goat milk for Cajeta-making. The sugar, goat milk and cinnamon stick are mixed and brought to a simmer.

For comparison sake, I wanted you all to see the transformation of the Cajeta over a 60-80 minute period of simmer down. It’s color becomes darker and darker until finally the Cajeta has reached full caramelization.

Singing Hills Cajeta! It kind of makes me speechless it’s so good. It’s much different from a traditional caramel. It’s lighter, and has a beautiful clean finish, with a slightly tangy acidity to it. It’s something we hope to have around a lot in years to come as our business grows. The Cajeta gets layered into the pints during packaging.

Boom! Horchata with Cajeta! Creamy rice milk ice cream layered with Singing Hills goat milk caramel. It’s a little bit of Mexico and Minnesota all in one pint.

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 3/29 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!

March 21, 2013

Irish Soda

OK fine – so we’re a little late to the St. Patrick’s Day parade, but this flavor was dreamt up in the spirit of the green day of drinking, and we’re going to post it anyway. We’ve been scheming beer flavors quite a bit over the last few months and released one of our first a few weeks back with the Brown Ale and Bacon Marmalade ice cream. The original plan for this pint of ice cream was an irish drink using a Guinness base, but the rest of the ingredients ended up changing at the last minute, a decision possibly influenced by a pint (or two) of Guinness.

While preparing a meal of Corned Beef and Cabbage for ourselves and the rest of the Froz family oe’r the weekend, we snacked on this wonderful Irish soda bread along with some Irish cheddar from the Seward Co-op. Actually, I should rephrase that for factual accuracy -“while Erik prepared a fantastic irish meal of Corned Beef and Cabbage for the rest of us”….anyway, back to the story.

We enjoyed the soda bread so much, we decided to lay waste to the orignal plans and make it a co-star of this week’s flavor with the Guinness base.

Like we’ve done many many times before, we cube the soda bread, toss it in butter and sugar, and bake it into crunchy little croutons to add the textural element to the ice cream. It’s like having an ice cream cone built in, except this ice cream cone is made of Irish Soda bread and tastes really good.

The base of the ice cream was none other than everyone’s favorite Irish stout. To flavor the ice cream we reduce the beer down with some sugar and create an extract of sorts, then mix it in to our standard ice cream base.

Magically delicious. A malty Guinness ice cream studded with crunchy bits of irish soda bread. We call it Irish Soda.
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 3/22 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!