Saturday, December 20, 2003

Following up with Butter Pecan

Following hot and fast on the heels of my recent escapades with creating the perfect Mint Chip Ice Cream, I plunged back into the artisan ice cream world again this past weekend and ended up with a marvelously smooth, layered toasted butter pecan ice cream that's been my favorite creation to date. Just awesome.

Not all that hard to put together either. Just melt a 1/4 of butter in a pan, add 1/2 cup pecan bits (Trader Joe's sells nice bags of them) and some kosher salt. Toast until the pecans begin to darken and then drain the butter off (you can save the butter for something else though I'm still trying to figure out what but it smells great!) and allow the pecans to cool completely.

Make the basic vanilla ice cream recipe but cut back on the vanilla just a bit. Pour the mixture into the ice cream maker, let it do its thing for 20 minutes or so, then add the chilled pecans (I've taken to freezing them for a couple of minutes) and continue mixing for another 5 minutes.

Pack in containers and chill for a few hours in the freezer or dig right in and enjoy it now. The key is using good heavy cream in the mix and folding it into the milk and sugar mixture, don't blend it or you'll flatten out the resulting ice cream.

Follow up site from a post a few weeks ago about the Salmon and Cucumber Salad calling for some creme fraiche (though I wrote it then as creme fresh), a page on substitute dairy products......
Cook's Thesaurus: Cultured Milk Products
Cultured Milk Products

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