We devised an experiment to put Seattle’s top sugar spinners to the test: ask four of our best pastry chefs to invent a dessert using four local ingredients. The resulting confections rocked our sweet world. The Basics: a regional cheese, a Northwest wine, a Seattle coffee, a Washington berry.

Poppy is represented on page 1, Taste on page 2, Honoré Artisan Bakery on page 3, and Canlis on page 4.

 

Blue Cheese Ice Cream with Streusel and Compote
Dana Cree, Poppy
Ingredients:Rogue Creamery Rogue River Blue cheese, Barnard Griffin 2007 Syrah Port, Victrola Coffee’s Colombia Huila Monserrate Excelso, wild blackberries from Foraged and Found Edibles

Acclaimed avant-garde confectioner Dana Cree is a master at fusing sweet and savory. For this dish she folded a quiet but assertive measure of blue cheese into a dollop of ice cream, then set a scoop atop a hazelnut streusel infused with coffee aromas and spread over a wild blackberry and port coulis.

RECIPE

Blue Cheese Ice Cream with Streusel and Compote 

Makes 8 servings
Prep time 2 hours
Total time 3 hours

INGREDIENTS
Ice Cream
1 3/4 cups heavy cream
3 1/2 cups milk
10 1/2 oz blue cheese
7 oz (about 9 large) egg yolks
1 1/3 cups honey
Salt to taste

Compote
9 oz wild mountain blackberries
7 tbsp sugar
7 tbsp port

Streusel
1 cup butter
3 1/2 oz coffee beans
7 oz pretoasted hazelnuts
2 2/3 cup flour
1 cup brown sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla

DIRECTIONS
In a saucepan, bring the cream and milk to a boil. Crumble in blue cheese and stir until the cheese melts into the hot cream. Transfer, in batches, to a blender and puree to a milklike consistency. Strain through a fine mesh strainer. In a bowl, mix in the egg yolks and transfer back to the saucepan. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens and reaches 165 degrees. Strain the hot blue cheese custard through a fine mesh strainer into a bowl, and set. When the custard is cool, add the honey. Taste the custard and add salt as needed. Churn in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s directions.

Combine all compote ingredients in a saucepan and simmer for 10 to 15 minutes, until the blackberries become very fragrant, expel their juices, and thicken with the sugar and port. Transfer the berry compote to a blender and puree until smooth. Run puree through a fine mesh strainer. Chill in the refrigerator.

In a saucepan, warm butter over very low heat and when it begins to melt, combine with coffee beans. Continue until butter is melted. Turn the stove down lower and allow the coffee to infuse in the butter for 1 hour, stirring occasionally (the butter should remain in liquid form). Chop the hazelnuts, then combine with flour, brown sugar, and salt, mixing together until even. Return the coffee butter to the stove and heat until it melts to a liquid. Strain the beans from the butter, and add butter to the bowl of dry ingredients. Add the vanilla and stir, using your fingers, until the mixture forms moist clumps ranging in size from green peas to chickpeas. Spread the streusel on a sheet pan and bake at 350 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes, until golden. Allow it to cool, then break it up with your fingers.

To assemble the dessert, place a scoop of the blue cheese ice cream in a dish, spoon cooled blackberry compote over the top, and sprinkle with hazelnut coffee streusel.