February Adventure Club pick-up week is the 13th-18th!
Here's a bit more detailed information about each of our flavors:
*** Bonjour, Bostock ***
Bostock (or, in French, Brioche aux Amandes) is a pastry that will make you rethink your brunch French toast (if not blow your mind / change your life). It starts with day old brioche, or in our case, challah from Fire Island Rustic Bakeshop. The rich bread gets soaked through orange-almond syrup, streaked with local jam, smeared with frangipane (an almond cream, marzipan with extra butter and eggs), sprinkled with slivered almonds. After a short bake, it is puffed and chewy, crunchy on the edges — total perfection. For this flavor, we started with a sweet almond base, and threw in chunks of our bostock plus some of our extra homemade frangipane and almonds. There is a touch of coriander in our fresh orange simple syrup, and for our local jam, we went with an Alaskan rhubarb.
(Every summer, we trade ice cream coupons for pounds and pounds of neighborhood rhubarb. We freeze it and make it into jam throughout the year for a very Alaskan taste).
How it came to be:
This flavor was an evolution and adventure in culinary learning representative of a number of our flavors. From the beginning, we’d had a hankering to make a French toast flavor, using Fire Island Rustic Bakeshop challah or sourdough. We made a few trials —one, with an eggy maple base and crunchy cinnamon challah croutons; one with actual French toast bits immersion blended and steeped in the base. We got a little sidetracked making some renditions with Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal. During one of our visits to Fire Island, their head baker Carlyle mentioned the concept of Bostock to us. We hadn’t even heard of this! We did a little research, tried out a few recipes, and were hooked.
*** Kaffir Lime Leaf + Sweet Rice Cake ***
This flavor begins with an infusion of kaffir lime leaves, lending a unique taste that is fresh and citrusy, yet unlike most more familiar citrus flavors. The limes (Citrus hystrix) is native to tropical Asia, and while the fruit itself is small, wrinkly, warty and extremely sour and bitter, the leaves are a key part of many stews and curries in Thailand, Cambodia and Laos. New Sagaya carries small cartons of fresh leaves, if you want to play around in your own kitchen!
Into the kaffir lime base, we throw little chunks of our homemade sweet rice cake, a mochi-like chew (and gluten-free, since it’s made with rice flour). To round everything out and add a bit of complexity, we sprinkle black sesame seeds throughout and drizzle in a bit of sweetened condensed milk. We imagine this flavor as something you might eat to conclude a big pad thai dinner.
Kaffir Lime (Citrus hystrix) Facts, brought to you by Staff Botanist, Nicole:
• WHERE: native to Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and parts of India
◦ Cool fact: the Kaffir Lime lives near the epicenter of all citrus evolution
▪ The citrus genus originated in tropical Asia/Oceania, where it was domesticated and later introduced to the Mediterranean. There are four citrus species (the mandarin orange, pomelo, citron, and papeda) which have been cross-bred to produce nearly all the citrus fruits we eat today! Kaffir limes are descendants of the papeda, the most ancient of the four ancestor fruits.
Unbeleafable
◦ The leaves of the plant make it of culinary note: they contain an abundance of citronellal. This compound gives kaffir lime leaves an intensely fresh aroma, full of lemon and pine notes.
Bonus Treat: *** Choco-Taco ***
This month’s bonus treat was developed by a leader in our kitchen crew, Dalecia, who recently celebrated her one year anniversary with Wild Scoops. Here is what she says:
“Soon after beginning my employment with Wild Scoops I began dreaming and hoping that we might make our own version of that childhood classic confection, the Choco Taco. We had everything we needed: the irresistible waffle cone batter, the dark chocolate, and endless ice cream possibilities. Not that there wasn't plenty to learn and do — with the downtown Scoop Shop opening, there was hardly a dull shift in the Wild Scoops Test Kitchen in Fairview! Then, along came winter, and with it came long-deserved rest for our team: rest, reflection and tasty scheming. We began brainstorming new, brave, and wildly delicious ice cream treats to debut in our Adventure Club, and now after a year in this blue apron, taco time had come!
Goofy trials ensued as we looked for the best way to get the waffle shell into the shape we wanted (restaurant taco stands, a broomstick suspended from the ceiling, some tinfoil sculptures...I won't give away which one was the best!)
This month, the Wild Scoops Test Kitchen is proud to present our first rendition of the Choco Taco: a waffle taco shell made from our famous homemade batter, lined with dark chocolate, filled with cinnamon ice cream, dipped in dark chocolate and our birch-chipotle nuts, and finally drizzled with butterscotch fleck."