Loading ...Upper Midwest Gourmet is a one-stop, wholesale distributor of specialty food service ingredients, Flamenco fair trade organic coffee, Italian gelato ingredients and equipment, hundreds of other gourmet beverages and foods, café equipment and machines, and environmentally-conscious supplies like cups, napkins, and eco-sleeves.
Upper Midwest Gourmet
1901 Traffic St. NE Minneapolis, MN 55413
Office: (612)728-7208 / Fax: (612)728-7227 / E-mail: info@uppermidwestgourmet.com
Hours: Monday-Thursday 8:30am-5pm / Friday 9am-1pm (Central Time)
See About Us for more. Our UMG Blog starts below. Thank you.
By now it is no secret that I love cupcakes, but imagine this- Red Velvet cupcakes are now drinkable, thanks to Cappuccine!
The best part is that they really do taste (just like a red velvet cupcake), smell (cupcake aroma even from powder), and look (bright red) just like the real thing!
Cappuccine even has a great recipe for an amazing cream cheese whipped cream to top the drink!
(For pricing or additional product information, please Contact Us. Thank you.)
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!
Next time you are making your way from the Twin Cities down to Rochester or if you are just enjoying Southern Minnesota make sure to stop in Pine Island at the Better Brew Coffeehouse! They are preparing the best coffee drinks in their area and are always happy to meet someone new.
If it is high quality ingredients prepared perfectly that makes you happy, then this cafe is sure to put a huge smile on your face.
The owner, Marie, along with her other awesome ladies on her staff, know what they are doing and take pride in every drink, baked good, or meal that they create. They care about being organic, fair-trade, and eco-concious which is right up UMG’s alley. If you want a great experience with some yummy treats then you need to go to Better Brew Coffeehouse today!
Better Brew Coffeehouse
Owner/Manager: Marie Hlava
301 North Main St.
Pine Island, MN 55936
507-356-2100
UMG wants to congratulate Alan (Flamenco Coffee Roaster) and Kayla!
They got married last Saturday and it was blast had by all!
Thanks for including us in your special day. We wish you both nothing but the best in your life together!
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!
Amoretti has a large line of Pastry ingredients. I have been playing with some of their compounds and extracts lately.
It’s kind of like my own little cupcake heaven.
If you would like to play too, give us a call. All their ingredients can be drop shipped to you. Let us know if you would like to experiment with any bakery, pastry, beverage, gelato or ice cream applications. I promise you. It is a lot of fun.
Here’s the basic cupcake recipe that I have been using for my experiments (makes a dozen):
1/2 cup butter (room temp)
2/3 cup granulated white sugar
3 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (also try subbing sifted cake flour)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup milk
Be sure to add your favorite flavoring ingredient (See below inspiration).
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line or grease 12 muffin cups.
Beat butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add in the eggs and vanilla, beat until well blended.
In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt.
With mixer on low speed, alternately add flour mixture and milk. Mix thoroughly.
Evenly fill cups and bake 18-20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out of the center clean.
For Orange Cream Cupcakes:
Add 2 tablespoons of Amoretti’s Blood Orange compound and the zest from 1 orange.
Top with Cream Cheese frosting! (See recipe below)
For Blackberry-St. Germain Cupcakes:
Add 2 tablespoons Amoretti Blackberry compund, 1 teaspoon Amoretti Elderberry Blossom extract, and 1 teaspoon Amoretti Champagne extract.
Top with Berry Buttercream (See recipe below).
For Strawberry Champagne Cupcakes:
Add 2 tablespoons Amoretti Strawberry compound.
Top with Champagne buttercream!(See recipe below).
Cream Cheese Frosting:
2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, 1/2 cup butter, softened
2 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
In a medium bowl, cream together the cream cheese and butter until smooth. Mix in the vanilla, then gradually stir in the confectioners’ sugar. Store in the refrigerator after use.
Berry buttercream:
1 cup (2 sticks) butter
4-5 cups powdered sugar, sifted
2 teaspoons Amoretti Blackberry compund, 3-4 tablespoons of milk
optional: 1/2 cup of fresh blackberries and/or raspberries whipped into frosting. Yummmm.
1. Beat butter until creamy, scrape bowl.
2. Add 2 cups of sifted powdered sugar, one tablespoon of milk and blackberry compound, beat until combined.
3. Add more powdered sugar (One cup at a time) along with milk (one tablespoon at a time) as needed to get to whatever consistency/sweetness you wish to achieve.
***Champagne buttercream: Sub 2 teaspoons Amoretti Champagne extract for blackberry compound.
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!
Here at Upper Midwest Gourmet, we carry Ghirardelli sunrise unsweetened cocoa, and as a baker looking to expand my horizons, I couldn’t help grabbing a sample of sunrise cocoa to try a few new recipes. (If you find that you have a similar urge, give us a call and we can send you a sample of your very own.) So, I decided on Red Velvet cupcakes and after finding them to be delicious, used some of the ingredients I had on hand for another recipe- buttermilk brownies.
Red Velvet Cupcakes:
Ingredients:
| 1/2 cup butter
1 1/2 cups white sugar 2 eggs 1 cup buttermilk 1 teaspoon vanilla extract1 fluid ounce red food coloring* * This amount of red food coloring is required to get that pure “red” color, but I did not use nearly this much. It is a matter of looks and totally up to you, the baker to decide |
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 tablespoon distilled white vinegar 2 cups all-purpose flour 1/3 cup Ghirardelli Sunrise unsweetened cocoa powder 1 teaspoon salt |
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,
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!
UMG is happy to announce some new products:
(For pricing or additional product information, please Contact Us. Thank you.)
Hooray for Spring!
Please check out our newest Brewsletter – Volume 40 – Spring 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!
Now, don’t those look delicious? You agree, you say? Well here is the recipe.
Ingredients:
2 cups all purpose flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar (packed)
1/4 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups ripe banana, mashed (2-3 bananas)
2 large eggs
1/3 cup plain yogurt
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup Fabbri Nocciola E Cacao delipaste (Nutella flavor)
Directions: Preheat oven at 350 degrees
1) Combine softened butter and granulated and brown sugars in large bowl.
2) Mix in mashed bananas
3) Sift in 1 cup of flour along with salt and baking powder. Mix thoroughly.
4) Now mix in wet ingredients including: eggs, yogurt and vanilla
5) Mix in another cup of flour. Combine thoroughly.
6) Finally, add delipaste. Mix thoroughly, giving the entire muffin a chocolate color and flavor.
7) Add mix into greased muffin pan or pan liners. Sprinkle on slivered almonds for extra pizzazz.
Bake for 18-22 min. or until toothpick comes out clean.
Yield: 12 muffins
