Artisan Ice Cream – Page 7

March 14, 2013

Coconut Bar Banana Caramel

Ok, so it’s March here in Minnesota and this is where the winter starts really dragging arrss. Fortunately, at the end of January I was able to break up the monotony of winter on a family trip to Mexico. It was there

that my sister-in-law purchased one of these coconut bars from the local grocery. I love coconut, so this bar was absolutely aaamaaazing! It’s ingredients: coconut, sweetened condensed milk, and sugar. Simple. Don’t ask what the pink stuff is on top, but the bar itself, is basically a bar version of a macaroon. The coconut is ground, so the texture ends up being chewy and much less course than a macaroon. It’s everything a coconut lover wants their coconut to be. And this is just the inspiration needed for this weeks flavor: Coconut Bar Banana Caramel. Lets do this…

In keeping with the simplicity of the original coconut bar, we stuck with plain unsweetened coconut and sweetened condensed milk. They both get pulverized in the food processor.

Next, the coconut mixture is pressed into a glass baking dish lined with parchment and baked at a low temperature. Once out of the oven, we puree lime zest and cane sugar in the food processor. The lime sugar is sprinkled over the top of the bars and brûléed with a torch. These bars? These ones are good. Really good! They get chopped up and added into our plain sugar cane ice cream base. Did I mention that we’re gonna add a banana caramel to this thing? Well, we are.

Time to work on the banana caramel. Yes, the banana pictured above doesn’t look that appealing, but it has more flavor than any good-looking banana I’ve ever tasted. It’s actually an overly ripe banana that has been preserved in the freezer. I throw all of our over-ripe bananas in the freeze and they are fantastic for smoothies, banana bread, or any other baking recipe. The bananas get sliced, placed on parchment, and slowly roasted in a low heat oven.

When they come out, we’re left with beautiful caramelized bananas that have lost much of their moisture content, but have retained all of their natural sugars and flavor. We make a traditional caramel by boiling granulated sugar. The caramel is finished with cream, and the bananas are added in after getting mashed, making for banana caramel ridiculousness. It’s just a lovely caramel. Banana caramel. Hot! It gets layered into the pints during packaging.

And here it is! Coconut Bar Banana Caramel! Just enough to make you forget that it’s STILL winter here in Minnesota, and enough to have you start thinking about eating ice cream dripping down your face in the months to come.

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 3/15 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!

February 21, 2013

Blood Orange Quark Ginger Shortbread

Its Blood Orange season which means for a very short time, they can be found in stores. They are a favorite of many when they show up around this time of the year. This is a flavor I’ve made before but have yet to post it on the blog. Now is as good as time as ever, right? The combination of the bright red orange with ice cream is hard to resist.

As you’ve seen us do for many other citrus flavors, the first step to this flavor involves juicing the blood oranges and reducing down with sugar to create a syrup to layer into the cream. Think this Minnesota made Blood Orange syrup might be good on pancakes or waffles, or some other dessert you have in mind? You might be seeing more from us in this department in the coming months.

Next, the ginger shortbread. Shortbread cookies are among my favorite, the richness and crunch is hard to beat. For a little extra kick, these are peppered with diced candied ginger then baked off and broken up in preparation for being mixed into the ice cream.

This was the first flavor we experimented with using Quark cheese, and it turned us on to a fantastic ingredient we’ll continue to use for many other flavors. It first appeared on our blog in the Cranberry Compote Quark + Toasted Walnuts. Its similar to cream cheese in texture, but a bit more tart and gives the ice cream an excellent cream flavor.

The quark is blended with the ice cream base, and the ginger shortbread is mixed into the cream during the churn. At the end, rich swirls of the blood orange syrup are layered in with the ice cream as it is packed into the pint. The end result is a cheesecake like ice cream, swirled with blood orange syrup and full of ginger shortbread crunch.

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 2/22 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!

February 7, 2013

Meyer Lemon Ricotta Black Pepper

Since we’re on the citrus kick, I’ve dug up a flavor that I’ve contemplated for nearly a year. Meyer lemons are one of my favorite citrus fruits and I wanted to make an ice cream that didn’t have swirl or a syrup, but was straight up flavored with the fruit. We’re no stranger to incorporating cheese in our ice creams either, but this marks the first time we’ve used Ricotta. Its sweet mild flavor seemed like a nice way to balance the sweet and sour of the lemon, and black pepper is a way to finish it off with a little bite.

Similar to last week’s flavor Lime with Macadamia and Ginger Caramel, we use zest from the lemon –

we also juiced the lemons and reduced them into a syrup to further intensify the lemon flavor once added to the cream.

Then the cream base was made, using our organic cane sugar base along with this beautiful, tasty ricotta from the Seward Co-op

All ingredients were blended, with fresh ground black pepper added in right before the churn

The end result is a light, yet rich lemon infused ice cream with an added creaminess from the Ricotta and a nice chirp of black pepper at the end

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 2/8 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!

January 24, 2013

Georgia Walnut

The past few weekly flavors have been inspired by delusions of beaches and warmer weather; happy thoughts to escape the harsh reality of our midwestern winter. While my frozen counterpart enjoys a nice warm weather vacation this week, I remain in the Cities, proudly and hatefully enduring sub zero temperatures which will only harden me and make me enjoy 30 degrees for the remainder of the winter so much more (right?).

This flavor represents the true meaning of Nordic endurance: pure indulgence that only a deep winter freeze can truly incite – something to dull the pain of frostbite, lack of sun and society. Specifically important keys to this equation: Chocolate and Booze.

Background: A few years ago my Pops clued me in to one of his favorite new dessert finds, the Georgia Walnut Pie at the Harbor View Cafe in Pepin, Wisconsin. Being the fiend for pecan pie that I am, a new nutty pie treat piqued my interest. The Georgia Walnut pie is an incredibly rich concoction of chocolate, walnuts, cinnamon and butter – a chorus of flavors that will melt the elastic in your socks and cause momentary amnesia. As soon as I had it, I knew it was an ice cream flavor. Add in a last minute improv of bourbon and you’ve suddenly created the perfect company for your January misery. Typically we tell people that our ice cream isn’t meant for large quantities because we don’t cut corners when it comes to sugar and fat. For this week, all bets are off.

To bring this flavor full circle I chose to create a Bourbon Walnut jam of sorts, by slowly reducing crushed walnuts with brown sugar and water until the flavor of the walnuts is infused into a thick – jam like reduction. It looks like a caramel because of the color from the brown sugar, but the sugar is never cooked to a point where it technically caramelizes. What you end up with is Jam.

The bourbon finishes it off to give it a well rounded kick. Or maybe a roundhouse kick. You decide.

The ice cream base is essentially our 3x Chocolate spiced with Cassia Cinnaomon.

The ice cream is churned and the Bourbon Walnut Jam is layered and rippled throughout the pint.

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 1/25 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!

January 10, 2013

Coconut & Mangosteen Caramel

We’re entering the middle of January when the true doldrums of a Midwestern winter take hold, and you can’t help but dream of a warm paradise somewhere closer to the equator. With no sunny beach in my future for this winter, I get my kicks by enjoying the fruits (no pun intended) of such places to remind me of what I could have. Maybe its a bit sadistic, but I enjoy it. As an aside, in the 90 odd flavors we’ve put up on this blog so far, we have yet to do one friendly to the dairy free and vegan audiences. This marks our first flavor in both of those categories.

I first was introduced to the strange fruit through a short story in one of my college lit classes (the title of which I’ve forgotten) and have always been curious about it. Native to Indonesia and South America, for a long time they were illegal in the U.S. due to fears of harboring Asian fruit fly. You can find them fresh now, but you’ll still have to do some hunting. Since we weren’t able to get our hands on any fresh, we went the canned route (we’re making a caramel with them anyway) and picked them up with our coconut milk at our often lauded haunt – United Noodles.

Again with the little brains. What does this mean?

For this flavor we chose to do a Mangosteen caramel that would be layered into the base and provide a truly tropical version of a coconut caramel.

Hinted with a bit of fresh ginger

The mangosteen was pureed and strained to remove the seeds and fibers, and then combined with the fresh ginger, sugar and boiled down into a nice flowable caramel.

Next, the coconut ice cream. Coconut milk works wondefully for a dairy free/vegan option because it has a high enough fat content to freeze without being icy. With organic cane sugar and some organic vanilla, you’d never know the difference. (As long as you don’t loathe coconut).

Finally after churning the coconut base, the Mangosteen caramel was layered in as the pints were packed.

What we end up with is a deliciously creamy coconut ice cream with a bright, lightly fruity, mangosteen caramel.

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 1/11 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!