Tuesday, October 26, 2010

a pictureless post

My computer died on me the other week. I opened the lid to wake it up and about
10 seconds later, the screen went black, and it wouldn't boot up again. It's off now getting a new logic board. Fingers crossed it comes back to me ok. I'm hoping I haven't lost anything from my hard drive, as I haven't backed it up for... ever.
For now I'm using Jon's old, slow computer, so I'm not going to upload any new photos (sorry!).

Anyway, hope you had a nice weekend. Ours started early on Saturday morning
with a phone call from a friend's bucks party (in Melbourne). The phone got passed around, so Jon got a quick catch up with a few friends. Afterwards, we headed in
to LSU for an all-you-can-eat pancakes fundraiser, and stopped by Mike the tiger's enclosure (LSU has a live mascot!). We went out to BJ's for dinner (burger and pizza, good beer and a very excellent cookies 'n cream pizookie for dessert). The restaurant is part of the Mall of Louisiana, so after dinner, we went for a walk round the shops. Yesterday, we drove out to Gonzales for some more (outlet) shopping, and stopped in at Latte e Miele on the way home for some delicious gelato. Fun!

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

RECIPE : butter pecan ice cream

I love ice cream. It's one of my absolute favourite things to eat. Strangely though (and despite the fact I enjoy cooking/baking), I'd never really considered making
my own. After spotting these groovy ice cream makers on special at Sur la table,
we decided to buy one (in blue. The colour is really nice in person, quite purpley).
I searched the interweb, and we picked butter pecan for our first batch, though I bookmarked quite a few other recipes I'd also like to try.

Recipe from here and the video here (mostly for the directions)
Makes about 1.5 litres

Ingredients
1 stick (approx 115g) butter
1 cup chopped pecans
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup whole milk
2 cups heavy cream
2 eggs
3/4 cup granulated sugar (we found the end result pretty sweet, so might try 1/2 or 2/3 cup next time)
1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions
Melt the butter in a pan, add pecans. Cook until lightly browned. Remove from heat and strain, reserving the butter. Allow pecans to cool completely before use.

Heat milk and cream in a saucepan. In a large bowl, whisk eggs and sugar together until light and fluffy. Pour cream and milk into egg mix slowly while whisking (a tea towel or damp paper towel under the bowl helps keep it from slipping around on your bench). Once combined, add cream and egg mix back into saucepan and continue heating. At this point, I added a few spoonfuls of the pecan infused butter. Once this is thick enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon, strain into a bowl and add the vanilla. Cover with cling film (with the cling film sitting on the surface of the mix, this will prevent it from developing a skin), and refrigerate until chilled.

Assemble ice cream maker and switch on. Slowly pour in ice cream mix and churn for 20-25 minutes. Add pecans and churn for further 5 minutes. Transfer to a container and freeze 3-4 hours until firm.

Great on its own, even better in a waffle cone :)