Upper Midwest Gourmet

Today was a day of experimentation.

Cappuccine’s  Red Velvet Cupcake made an excellent gelato!

Red Velvet Cupcake Gelato

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Big Train’s Chai came into the mix next.

Gingerbread Chai Gelato

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We had to get in a tried and true Fabbri favorite as well.

Amarena Cherry Gelato

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But, after all was said and done- I am fairly certain that this twist on Fabbri’s Caramel was today’s winner!

Salted Caramel Gelato

We added sea salt to a recipe using Fabbri’s Caramel delipaste. Also, we left the sea salt grinder out to garnish at will. The result was euphoric. Two UMG employees have walked by to dish up 2nd servings just as I typed this sentence. No joke. I won’t be the one to name names though…

Summer is almost over with Fall on the way!

Please check out our newest Brewsletter – Volume 41 – End of Summer 2010

Also, please go to the Brewsletters Page on our website to download and read previous Brewsletters. They contain lots of useful information!

Enjoy and thanks again from all of us at UMG!

This week I experimented with several sorbet flavors. Two were standard Simple flavors, Mojito, which is a new flavor from Fabbri and Lemon. The other two were made using the Fabbri Simple Neutral base, Cola and Wild Berry. The Cola was flavored by an Amoretti extract and the Wild Berry was made using a combination of fresh fruit and Fabbri delipaste. Check out these photos of the finished product. When your mouth starts watering, give us a call for recipe ideas and product ordering. Remember, summer’s not over yet!

I recently found myself craving a “berry cheesecake” style desert and promptly decided to make some gelato with our Fabbri Ricotta base. I used blueberries, because this craving was a very specific one, but there are several berry options that would do quite nicely in this recipe, namely Fabbri’s Amarena (Cherry), Frutta di Bosco (Wild Fruits) or Fragolosa (Strawberry) Variegates. Luckily for me I have Fabbri’s imported Italian gelato ingredients and a Bravo Trittico 18 Mechanic “hot process” batch freezer at my fingertips.  (You may also obtain these ingredients, this batch freezer, and a plethora of other products and equipment by contacting our office @ 612-728-7208, hint. hint).

For one 5 liter batch of the Ricotta gelato you will need:

750 grams Fabbri Ricotta base

1500 grams milk

175 grams sugar

200 grams fresh ricotta

Directions:

Add ricotta powder and sugar into milk, mix well. If using a cold process machine, heat milk so that the powders dissolve completely.

Once powders are mixed well, add in fresh ricotta and again mix thoroughly.

According to your machine,  hot process your mix or move directly onto freezing.

When extracting the gelato from your batch freezer, stop half way through and layer in the fruit/berry variegate of your choice.  Finish extracting the second half of the gelato, then layer your remaining variegate on top in an aesthetically pleasing fashion.

Proceed to serve this tasty treat to the delight of all!

Do you like Key Lime Pie? Me too. My favorite new Gelato flavor is Key Lime Pie using the Fabbri recipe from our recent Gelato workshop. It’s creamy and sour and little pieces of yummy graham cracker crust, oh, I feel like I’m in South Beach when I’m eating it.   It’s the perfect summer flavor and it’s soooooo easy to make.  Want the recipe? Give us a call and we’ll tell you how to make it.

Cheers, David

We had a blast at Coffee Fest Minneapolis this year and want to say “Thank You” to everyone that stopped by our booth and chatted with us.

Our Flamenco coffees were very well-received by all and we are glad that we waited until to this show to unveil our newest dark blend, Minnesota Mudd! The Rancilio Lever machine pulled some amazing Matador espresso shots to anyone that needed that extra caffeine.

The Barista Fria Smoothies and Frappes (with the awesome ice shaving machine) definitely caught a lot of people’s attention. Per usual, we were the only ones with Italian Gelato and Sorbetto that we made fresh for the show! Also starring in our booth were the new flavors from Cappuccine being blended on a Vita-Mix blender (Cafe Mocha Chip & Mint Chip Cookies and Creme) and the new flavor from Big Train being blended on a BlendTec blender (No Sugar Added Vanilla Smoothie).

It is customers like all of you that took part in the show that make our jobs as great as they are. We will continue to work as hard as possible to serve you as a leader in the cafe industry. At Upper Midwest Gourmet we pride ourselves on being more than just a  distributor and a roastery, but a business that makes sure your busines is successful.

Here are some pictures from the festival:

If you have interest in these products or working with us, please Contact Us. Thanks again,

We hope to see you there, please visit us in our booths 326 & 328!

Coffee Fest Minneapolis
Minneapolis Convention Center – June 04 – 06, 2010

In this challenging time of economic uncertainty, with trusted advice more valuable than ever, Coffee Fest brings you the nation’s best retail operators and industry professionals and consultants to ensure your business survives and even thrives with today’s profitability threats and tomorrow’s challenges.

Event Location
Minneapolis Convention Center
1301 Second Ave S
Minneapolis, MN 55403-2781
612-335-6000

(For additional information, please Contact Us. Thank you.)

Thanks to everyone that took part in the Fabbri workshop yesterday at UMG. Special thanks to Tom Trieshmann and Donna Domiano “The Gelato Queen” from Fabbri North America for their efforts and expertise.

Donna and Tom put on a great workshop by making some amazing gelatos and sorbettos, refreshing seasonal drinks, beautiful pastries, and showed us all how to use Fabbri in a ton of different applications.

Here is a link to all pictures from the event:

Fabbri Workshop

Donna’s pics from Fabbri Seminar

If this looks like something you want for your business or if you have questions please Contact Us.

Thanks again!

Many of you may be familiar with our Italian product line Fabbri, which produces a variety of gelato and pastry ingredients. The most common application for these products, specifically with the delipaste, is to flavor gelato. Well, this weekend I went home with a few samples of the Pistachio Fine delipaste, some rose extract oil and a mind set on experimentation. I love baking and I really don’t do it often enough, yet I have all of these exotic and delicious ingredients at my fingertips. Well, I decided enough is enough. It’s time to start taking advantage of the Fabbri products and commence experimental baking.

On Friday, I found a recipe for Pistachio cupcakes and Rose Petal buttercream online. I tweaked the recipe in order to accommodate my flavoring ingredients and improvised on quantities a bit. I’m a true believer in “to taste” baking, at least with flavoring ingredients. This recipe is a chiffon-style cake and can be labor-intensive and/or tricky, but never fear. The end result is delicious and well worth the effort.
So here it is: 
Pistachio Cupcakes
36 regular cupcakes / 350 degree oven
*2-3/4 cups cake flour sifted
1-1/4 cups sugar
1 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons baking powder
**1/2 -3/4 cup grape seed oil (or vegetable oil)
8 egg yolks (approximately 6 ounces)
1/2 cup water
4-6 ounces pistachio delipaste
10 egg whites (approximately 10 ounces)
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon cream of tarter

Read the rest of this entry »

Wisconsin Food Expo Milwaukee, WI; March 8th through the 10th, 2010 - Booth 748

Ah yes, the show season is soon to be upon us. For starters, Upper Midwest Gourmet will be showing off our duds again this year in Milwaukee Wisconsin at the Wisconsin Restaurant Associations annual Expo to be held at the Airline Center in downtown Milwaukee on March 8th trough the 10th (Mon-Wed). Go to www.wirestaurant.org/expo/ for more details on this show and to register. As in the past years, UMG has a boat load of FREE PASSES for Wednesday the 10th, the last day of the show. Please contact us direct at 612-728-7208 or contact Kevin direct at 612-250-8277 or Kevin@umgcoffee.com and we will mail you the tickets. You will need to register them once you have the ticket code. This can be done the day of the show at the door. This year we will be highlighting our new line of Ce Organic and Fair Trade, all natural flavoring syrups, our new International Paper Insulated Hold & Go Hot cups, Angela Marie’s Mega Marshmallow Munchies crisp rice bars, Pacific Foods Organic Simply coffee & tea ready to drink products, Deep River all natural chips and snacks, and our new Flamenco Organic Coffee Direct coffees. We will also have a new espresso machine on hand for your review, use and sampling of our espressos.

This is one of those shows that our staff ALWAYS looks forward to because of the amount of you that take the time to visit with us there and the many new customers we are lucky enough to meet each year. Of the many food & coffee shows that we show at, this has always been the best run and most fun to attend so I encourage you to try to make it if you can, you will not be disappointed!

Coffee Fest Minneapolis, MN, June 04 – 06, 2010

We are very excited to announce that the folks at Coffee Fest have scheduled one of their 2010 show right here in Minneapolis this year in June. Coffee Fest is still one of the better coffee focused shows in the industry so we expect nothing less at this show. We among many other local, regional and international companies will be showing. This Upper Midwest region of the country is finally getting the recognition we have so rightfully earned in the coffee world so this show should be full of useful information for any café owner in this market. As more details come in, we will continue to pass them on to you so please stay tuned or go directly to www.coffeefest.com for more details and to register for this show.

We always love to see our customers at every show we attend so please do come and say hello at one or both of these shows. Upper Midwest Gourmet will also be announcing our annual picnic/open house very soon so please stay tuned for that date to be made.

We thank you all for your continued support and patronage. We are nothing without our great customers and we are driven by your support to continue to improve our services and offerings to you!

See you at the shows!

All of us at Upper Midwest Gourmet would like to wish you, your family, your friends, and your staff a very Happy and Healthy New Year in 2010! We truly believe that your success creates our success and we promise to continue to support and serve you as much as possible!

Please always know that we are just a phone call or email away. UMG has been on the cutting edge of the coffee shop and cafe industry for almost 20 years! We have seen the latest and greatest fads come and go, but there are a few constants that will always remain the same. Coffee drinks and blended beverages are your bread and butter because  of their great profit margins. I agree with my previous statement, but I’ve learned that to be truly successful offering retail sales and food is a must.

One constant that makes any businesss successful is a self-motivated staff with ambitious goals along with a desire to always work hard no matter if it is within their job description or not. This is something amazing that I witness everyday working at UMG, but also something that is very obvious in many of the most succesful cafes that we work with. Striving to always be better is something that rarely breeds anything, but success.

Our guarantee to you, our customers, in this new year and decade is that we will continue to strive to always be better. In fact, we will be taking a coffee origin trip to Dominican Republic to meet our Flamenco Direct Relationship coffee friends and their families in February. This will give us a better understanding of all aspects of coffee production, but will more importantly build a stronger relationship with people we care about, just like our customers. We want you to know that there may be other companies that sell similar type products, but you will never find a company with more personal dedication to their customers than us.

We aren’t just a Midwest distributor of coffee shop products or just a Fair Trade Organic coffee roastery in Minnesota or just a gelato equipment and ingredient company. We are so much more than all of those titles and all we want is a chance to prove that to you this year!

Please Contact Us if you have any questions about what we can do for you.

Thanks for your support!

It’s that time of year again where we need to closeout our existing gelato equipment inventory. We have 1 countertop hot process Bravo Batch freezer; 1 – 12 pan Oscartielle Display Case; 1 – 4 pan ISA display case; 2 – 12 pan Sevel Display cases; 1 countertop shock freezer. Best prices of the year, call David today and get a great deal on gelato equipment.

Great news everyone.  We’ve imported a very small number of Fabbri’s Scarpato Panettone with Amarena Cherries for the Holidays.  The freighter is due to dock in New Jersey next week and the timing couldn’t be better.  The Scarpato Panettone is attractively packaged in a microfiber peach skin bag and includes an Amarena Fabbri spoon, a fantastic holiday item!

Pack Size is 6 x 1 kg Panettone per case.  I don’t have many of these coming so please reserve yours today.  Once they’re gone, it will be another year before we have more.

Don’t forget, as usual we have Fabbri’s Famous Amarena Cherries and Babas in small and large gift jars.   We also have large tins of Amarena Cherries  for your baking, pastry & desert making needs:

The Holidays are upon us.  If you want to make money on them, now is the time to place your orders.  Call us today for these and all our other great gift items before it’s too late.

Cheers,   David

Welcome to Fall!

Please check out our newest Brewsletter – Volume 39 - Fall 2009

Also, please go to the Brewsletters Page on our website to download and read previous Brewsletters. They contain lots of useful information!

Enjoy and thanks again from all of us at UMG!

Halloween Gelato Seminar

We’ve had many requests for another gelato seminar.  Now that business appears to be getting back to normal for most of you we thought this was a great time to host another.  Now is the perfect time to start planning and getting financing together for a Spring startup.

Come to UMG on Friday October 30^th @ 1pm and see all that Gelato can offer your business.

Fabbri will be sending Pastry Chef Tom Treischmann to co-host the event with us.  We’ll go over what type of equipment you’ll need, simple and artisan gelato preparations and have some fun with seasonal gelato ideas (beware of the Gelato Brain!)  Already making gelato?  Feel free to come over to meet Tom and pick his brain (not just the gelato one….getting curious aye?) and find new ideas for spicing up your gelato display.  Space is limited so please RSVP to david@uppermidwestgourmet.com and reserve a spot.