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 :)

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