Happy National Ice Cream Day with Northern Bloc
To celebrate National Ice Cream Day we interviewed our good friends over at Northern Bl°c and they’ve also put together this great summer recipe to share with you all, a perfect dessert after a summer barbeque while the coals are still hot, just as good under the grill or in the pan if the British weather lets you down!
How did the idea of the business come about?
The business was founded over a mutual love of ice cream, combined with the frustration of the lack of truly natural ice creams on the market.
What’s the background of the staff and also the Chef at Northern Bl°c?
We’ve all come from various walks of life and we’ve never brought a product to market before so its all a learning curve. Our meeting with our development chef / scientist was fate and from there Northern Bl°c in its current form was born. Our chef comes from a long line of ice cream masters and like his father and grandfather before him, he is constantly in the pursuit of perfection when it comes to ice cream. He is truly an expert and what he doesn’t know about ice cream isn’t worth knowing!
Where do you get the inspiration of some of the flavours?
Research has shown that Vanilla, Strawberry and Chocolate are the top selling flavours. Therefore we make our own take on these great traditional flavours. For example Strawberry & Black Pepper Ice cream – the black pepper gives strawberry ice cream a new life and the sea salt in the chocolate ice cream really helps to bring out the natural cocoa flavour. We are always innovating and trying new flavours – we are currently towards the end of next seasons R&D so look out for future flavours!
Whats the ethos of the brand / ingredients?
Northern Bl°c only ever uses responsibly sourced natural ingredients. NOTHING ARTIFICIAL.
Where can people find you, stockists etc?
All sorts of places from Leeds Grand Theatre, to Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Bolton Abbey, Keelhaul Farm shops, other delis, cafes, farm shops and restaurants! We’re pleased to say our list of stockists is growing weekly!
Any future flavours that we can look out for?
We’ll shortly be announcing three new flavours for our Autumn/Winter collection, we’re always innovating in the background. We can’t tell you exactly what yet but we’ve got some really exciting things ahead!
Spiced rum griddled pineapple with Northern Bl°c Bourbon Vanilla ice cream topped with candied red chilli
- Peel and core a ripe pineapple. Cut into rings.
- Marinade in dark rum (we used a spiced rum… Sailor Jerry’s but would work well with any) and some soft brown sugar with a cinnamon stick and a good quality Madagascan Bourbon Vanilla Pod for at least an hour. If you are prepared you can even do this overnight. Split the pod to release the seeds to maximse on flavour! (Alternatively use other spices here like five spice – its up to you – why not experiment)
- Griddle or cook the pineapple in a hot pan keeping back the marinade liquid. Cook until gold brown and caramelised on the edges. Take out and put to one side. Put the marinade rum syrup back into a hot pan and reduce down until it becomes a sticky syrup. This will be perfect for pouring over your dessert at the end.
- Make some candied chillis by finely chopping some pretty hot red chilis (deseeded) and then caramelise in a pan with sugar and a little water. Reduce down and then spread onto a greaseproof sheet to cool down, picking out the individual tiny pieces of chilli if possible so you get tiny bits of candy.
- Serve the pineapple at room temp or reheat it before serving with a big scoop of Northern Bl°c ice cream. We recommend our Coconut & Lime ice cream or Bourbon Vanilla.
- Top with the reduced rum syrup and the candied chilli. The chilli gives it an awesome crunch and little kick that lifts an otherwise very sweet dessert. Great thing is its easy and easy to put your own twist on it.
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Written by
17/07/2016