Small Batch Ice Cream – Page 13

May 3, 2012

Fennel Pollen

Sometimes simple is best. Over the course of the last year we’ve explored ice creams that sometimes include up to 5 main flavors. Big flavors like these greatly open up the variety and combinations we can make, but can also overshadow the greatness of one of those ingredients on their own.

In this instance, it was extremely tempting to pair the Fennel pollen with almonds, or honey or pistachios, etc. But in the end, the flavor of this particular spice turned out to be so complex and so incredible in ice cream that it demanded the stage to itself, at least for its first foray into our flavor cache.

Fennel pollen is an expensive spice, not so much because of being hard to find, but because of how difficult it is to harvest. It’s gathered by shaking it off the buds of fennel flowers and can take quite a bit of time to collect just an ounce. It has a golden appearance, and kind of tastes like it.

We steeped the fennel pollen in the cream to fully extract as much flavor as possible. The batter was then churned immediately. It seemed almost too easy.

We expected a unique flavor, but nothing like this. Once paired with the cream and sugar base, the obvious flavors such as anise blossomed, but so did caramel and curry notes. It could pair extremely well with a lot of different desserts or dishes, but to appreciate the depth of the flavor it really needs to be eaten all by itself.

Gold.

If we ever imagined an ice cream flavor for royalty, this would be it. We’re very excited about the how it turned out, and have a feeling this will be a Froz flavor for a long time to come.

As we do every week, we’ll be giving away two pints of this flavor. Just leave a comment on our facebook page or in the comments here to be entered into the drawing. We’ll draw two winners on Friday afternoon (5/4/2012) 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!

Would you like to see more of this kind of ice cream or be able to buy it online? Then please, help us with our fundraiser on indiegogo, we only have 8 days left and need all the help we can get! In exchange you’ll be one of the first to get our ice cream. Visit our page at www.indiegogo.com/frozbroz

April 26, 2012

Sweet Pea Mint

Here in Minnesota Spring is in the air, which is a little weird since it has felt like Spring for about two months now. This new season brings us much anticipation of a whole range of new flavors that the Minnesota harvest will bring. And thanks to our pals over at Bossy Acres, the harvest has already begun. If you don’t know Bossy, it’s time you “liked” them and followed them on Facebook and Twitter. Karla and Elizabeth of Bossy Acres are growing local, sustainable, organic produce right here in the city of Minneapolis, along with a small two acre plot in Dayton, MN. Not only are they growing a wide range of vegetables, gourmet salad mixes, micro greens, herbs, and sprouts, they are truly great stewards of our community.

Thanks to their efforts at their “urban ag site“, we picked up some of these gorgeous pea shoots for this weeks flavor: Sweet Pea Mint

These beauties are no joke. They offer a ton of sweet pea flavor and a nice crunchy pop. The question is: how do I get that sweet pea flavor into the ice cream?

These shoots are gold, and knowing the time and effort Bossy put into growing these really had me thinking about the best way to go about things. This is the point where I could go off about how important it is to know where your food comes from, and starting a relationship with your local farmers, purveyors and businesses, but I will spare you for another day.

I decided to separate the stems from the leaves. The stems got tossed into the cream for a steeping session along with

some of the leaves from this lucious mint from the Wisconsin Growers Cooperative.

After steeping, the mixture gets strained of all solids.

At this point the base took on a light green hue. The flavors were all there, but I really wanted more of that sweet pea flavor to envelop the cream, so I took the separated fresh pea shoot leaves and processed them finely in the food processor.

The sweet pea leaves get added into the strained sweet pea mint cream base and then into the mixer for a churn.

The result…

FrozBroz Spring flavors comin atchya with Sweet Pea Mint ice cream! At first bite the sweet pea flavor hits hard followed by a blast of mint then blending together like two peas in a pod.

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 (4/27/2012) 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 be willing to give us a little feedback that can be shared with everyone else. Good luck!

Would you like to see more of this kind of ice cream or be able to buy it online? Then please, help us with our fundraiser on indiegogo, we only have 15 days left and need all the help we can get! And in exchange you’ll be one of the first to get our ice cream. Visit our page at www.indiegogo.com/frozbroz

April 17, 2012

Sweet and Sour Cream Cheese Wonton – Fan Flavor Contest No. 2

This brings to a close our second “Fan Flavor Contest”. Again, the winner will be stylin in a spanky new FrozBroz T-shirt as well as eating a pint of their suggested flavor. We had a great response and everyone offered an impressive array of flavors, some intriguing and some kinda scary. So thank you to everyone who participated, and congratulations to Adam Arling who was the winner of “Fan Flavor Contest” No. 2 with his flavor suggestion of Sweet and Sour Cream Cheese Wonton.

When we make a flavor, conceptually, there are a number of different routes to take it. For this one, we both immediately knew that making a sweet and sour syrup to layer into the pints was the route for us.

The sweet and sour syrup consists of a reduction of rice vinegar, tomato paste, sugar, pineapple chuckers, and last but not least…Sriracha Chili Sauce. We needed to reduce this mixture into a syrup instead of thickening with cornstarch, so we could evaporate as much of the water content as possible.

After the syrup has reduced and thickened, we strain out the pineapple and tomato solids and we’re left with a nice sweet and sour syrup that doesn’t get icy when frozen in the ice cream.

The wontons presented a challenge – so thin and fragile they’re likely to get soggy in the cream – so we took a double headed approach – some steeped in the cream to add the fried flavor, and others were rolled up before frying and dried in the oven after to get a maximum crunch. Will they hold up in the ice cream? Time will tell, but the wonton flavor is undeniable.

Cream Cheese! We decided to mix this directly into our base . It makes for an ultra rich cheese cakey ice cream, along with all of the starches from steeping the base with fried wontons.

That wraps up or second “Fan Flavor Contest” with Adam’s suggestion of Sweet and Sour Cream Cheese Wonton FrozBroz style. Congrats Adam on the cray cray suggestion.!

UPDATE: 4/23/2012 Feedback from one of our winners…

Four of us tried the Wonton ice cream last night. Three of us enjoyed it; it was a bit too “saucy” for the fourth person’s tastes (she’s sensitive to vinegar flavors).

Here are our comments:
+ The ice cream base is really tasty and creamy. The cream cheese added smoothness to the base; we all felt that this base was exceptional in its texture. The flavor was mild, which was good so that it didn’t “fight” the sauce ribbons.
+ The sauce ribbons provided a good flavor contrast. It was a weird flavor for ice cream, but weird in a good way. We all enjoy funky desserts, so we really got into the fact that there was sweet n’ sour sauce in our ice cream!
+ The crunchy wonton bits added a nice texture contrast, and their flavor was appropriately wonton-y. Personally, these bits were my favorite aspect of the ice cream.
+ The other wonton bits were too mushy; they made it feel like the wonton bits were inconsistent.
+ The blending was inconsistent. Some bites were really strong with loads of sauce, while others were sauce-less. With much of the flavor coming from the sauce, we felt that the end product would be better if the ribbons were thinner and more evenly incorporated.
+ This same group of people tasted your Cardamom Basmati Pistachio ice cream, and we all agreed that we LOVED that one and LIKED this one.

Please don’t forget about our Indiegogo fundraising – we have just under 26 days to go and need all the help we can get! Help us meet our goal so we can start making our ice cream and getting it to all that want it.

http://www.indiegogo.com/frozbroz?a=446076

April 12, 2012

Azuki Red Bean

It’s not very often that we make a flavor with only a one ingredient add-in to our ice cream base. For one, it’s just not challenging enough, and two, it’s kinda boooooring. The reality is, flavors on their own like chocolate, strawberry and vanilla aren’t that boring. According to the International Ice Cream Association, these three flavors fall within the top four most popular ice cream flavors in the world. Sometimes our flavor ideas get too convoluted, and we feel the need to go back to where we started. And that’s just what I did this week. I went back to the root of my idea: Azuki Red Bean Ice Cream; because in the end, it’s another great flavor on it’s own, just like chocolate, strawberry and vanilla.

Want to talk about convoluted? This is one of those flavors I’ve been mulling around in my brain for about two months now. I write it on paper. Look at it. Dream about it. Talk to myself about it. It has consumed me at times, so I put it aside and come back when it feels right.

It’s right now. All by itself. Here we go…

Azuki Beans! Purchased these at Minneapolis’s finest Asian grocery: United Noodles .

They get soaked for 24 hours, rinsed and into a pot of cold water. We bring to a boil and simmered until fully cooked and falling apart.

Fully Cooked Azuki beans get strained and then go back into a sauce pan with sugar and a pinch of salt. This mixture gets cooked down into a sweet paste.

“An” – Sweet bean paste that is widely used in East Asian desserts. It can be eaten as is, stuffed into pastries and about a million other preparations; or in our case, stirred into our ice cream base. It’s texture is coarse, and has a unique fruity/nutty/earthy flavor. When mixed into the base the flavor is reminiscent of a strawberry ice cream.

Another ice cream flavor that’s great on it’s own… FrozBroz Azuki Red Bean Ice Cream

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 (4/13/2012) 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 be willing to give us a little feedback that can be shared with everyone else. Good luck! Also – again, please don’t forget about our Indiegogo fundraising – we’ve at the halfway pointdays and need all the help we can get! http://www.indiegogo.com/frozbroz?a=446076

April 5, 2012

Brown Butter Cornbread

Among all of the flavors we’ve made, this remains among the top. We consider it to be one of our banner flavors, and tends to come up anytime we are asked what our favorites are. Since this full recipe has been featured in Metro magazine’s march issue (see the whole process and get the recipe here), I’m not going to spend too much time reiterating it.

I will talk about McCann farm eggs which came our way through our friend Heidi Skoog (of Bastian+Skoog and Serious Jam). These beautiful eggs (which look like they’ve already been colored for Easter) exemplify the reasons why we love working with local farmers and why we think natural and responsible farming is the only way.

The eggs have great flavor, great texture and their color are perfect representations of the importance of raising animals to be happy. All of our ice cream includes eggs, and we were thrilled to have these for this batch.

The ice cream flavor itself was inspired through a southern kick I was on, stemming both from eating experiences I enjoyed with my in-laws in the blue hills of Virginia, as well as some of the great southern cooks like Frank Stitt that I stumbled upon during my obsession with southern cooking. Cornbread is a staple of the south, and I originally made it to pair with smoked pork butt. Turns out, it pairs well with absolutely anything, as cornbread is wont to do.

These crunchy cornbread croutons turn candy-like when suspended in the cream, and sing when accompanied by a little (or maybe a lot) of brown butter. We tend to develop flavors to be very forward, very “in-your-face” and this was one of the first that blazed the trail.

And in this case, as with all of our ice cream, its made with eggs from happy chickens, cream and butter from happy cows, and wait, did we mention happy farmers? All part of the equation.

This flavor is one of a handful that we are offering in the perks on our Indiegogo campaign. It will certainly be one of our mainstay flavors as we begin production. Help us out with a contribution and you be one of the first to ever have it. Or, be a lucky winner in this weeks giveaway and try it that way. Or better yet – BOTH! Please help us keep traffic going to the Indiegogo page- having our fans help us keep the visits to the page helps keep us as a featured project on Indiegogo, which will help us meet our funding goal.

RIGHT HERE! BROWN BUTTER CORNBREAD ICE CREAM!

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 (4/6/2012) 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! Also – again, please don’t forget about our Indiegogo fundraising – we’ve at the halfway pointdays and need all the help we can get! http://www.indiegogo.com/frozbroz?a=446076