Butter Pecan Ice Cream

We've been making our own ice cream for some time now, maybe a year or more. We rarely buy store made any more. And we consume a gallon a week. Yum.

And when I say "we", I mostly mean the Jedi. He is the Ice Cream Master.

The rest of us just kick back and enjoy the deliciousness.

Until now. dun-dun-DUN!

I wanted some butter pecan to go with my tub of Heggy's hot fudge. (Best hot fudge on the planet, by the way!) So, I looked up a recipe for butter pecan....and then I changed it drastically. The recipe below makes a gallon of ice cream. Go big or go home.

Here's what I did...

Butter Pecan Ice Cream

Ingredients:

• 2 qts heavy cream
• 4 eggs
• 2 1/2 cups brown sugar
• 1 cup chopped pecans
• 2 Tbs butter
• 2 tsp vanilla

Directions:

1. Melt butter in small frying pan. Add pecans and cook for 3 to 5 minutes until just beginning to brown. DON'T BURN THEM! Remove from heat.
2. Whisk 4 eggs in a mixing bowl and set aside.
3. Measure brown sugar into large pot. Slowly add cream and stir till sugar is smoothly blended. Heat over medium high burner while stirring till cream just begins to simmer. Again, don't you let that yummy cream scorch. Remove from heat.
4. Now you need to temper your eggs. Here's how. You need to grab a ladle full of your cream and slowly pour it into your eggs while whisking them. Repeat. The goal here is to slowly bring your eggs up to the temperature of your cream. If you do add the hot cream mixture too quickly, your eggs will cook. Gross. You don't want bite sized chunks of eggs in your ice cream. Again, gross.
5. When you have a hot mixture of eggs and cream, slowly stir it back into the pot with the rest of the cream. Turn the heat back on and bring it close to, but not to, a simmer. (The original recipe said test for doneness by inserting a spoon. Mixture is done when it coast the back of a spoon and you can wipe a clean stripe off with your finger. I have no idea what that's talking about. All I can say is, you are dealing with raw eggs. Make sure you get them to a germ killing temp and keep them there for a couple minutes.)
6. Remove from heat.
7. Stir in vanilla.
8. Transfer your pecans to a small container and put them in the freezer. Transfer your cream mixture to a large container and put it in your fridge. It needs to cool down and get chilled before you can make ice cream.
9.  When the cream is honest to goodness refrigerator cold, then make ice cream in your ice cream machine. When the cream is thick and done being processed in the machine, then stir in the pecans, transfer it all back into a large container, and put it in the freezer to harden off.