Friday, September 27, 2013

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. 

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Two for Tuesday: Strawberry Lemonade & Peanut Butter Pie

Two for Tuesday is back!

One of my goals for myself while I'm on a self-imposed Facebook fast is to get back to regular posts on my blog.

Thus, the return of Two for Tuesday :)

First up..... strawberry lemonade.

This stuff is to die for! We had some strawberry lemonade at Longhorn Steakhouse (where we went for our anniversary dinner.) It was yummy, so I found a recipe on my phone. We stopped and picked up strawberries and lemons on our way home. The next day was Saturday. The Jedi ran the smoker and put three racks of ribs in. We had another family over for dinner, and I made this strawberry lemonade.

The drink we had a Longhorn was good.....the homemade stuff was much much much better.

Warning, it can be a bit labor intensive, so I recommend recruiting a couple of children to help. I'm all about free child labor.

Ingredients
  • 1 1/2 cup sugar, divided
  • 4 cups water, divide
  • 2 cups fresh strawberries, hulled
  • 1 cup fresh lemon juice (4 to 5 lemons)
Directions

  1. Combine one cup of sugar and one cup of water in a small sauce pan. Heat and stir until sugar is dissolved and mixture is clear. Remove from heat and let it cool.
  2. Rinse and hull your strawberries. (Or give this task to an older child to be working on while you are making the sugar syrup.)
  3. Put strawberries and one cup cold water in a food processor. Run it till the mixture is pretty smooth. Transfer to a pitcher and stir in 2 more cups of cold water.
  4. Cut your lemons in half and juice them. THIS IS NOT THAT HARD, even without a fancy juicer. Check out this video on how to juice lemons with a fork. (And again, grab a couple of kids to help.)
  5. Pour the cup of lemon juice and the cooled sugar syrup into the pitcher and stir.
  6. You may know chill the mixture for up to 8 hours. (It will need stirred again before you pour it.) OR you can serve it right away. 
  7. Either way, when you are ready to serve, fill clear glasses two-thirds full with ice. (Yes, the glasses do need to be transparent; this is too pretty to hide behind opaque plastic.) Then pour your homemade strawberry lemonade over the ice. I like to pop a pretty colored straw in the glasses too. This will make enough to fill 8 glasses. 
And my second recipe for the day is...peanut butter pie. 

This one is nice for these last dog days of summer because it doesn't require much, if any, baking. I threw this together at the last minute when I needed something to take to a friend's house. I didn't have a prepared graham cracker crust on hand, so I made one. Sweetling and the Jedi don't care for chocolate, so using Oreos as a crust wasn't an option. (I did have heavy cream on hand. I pilfered the Jedi's ice cream making ingredients and bought another carton for him from the store the next day.)

Here's the recipe I used, and aside from swapping out the crust, I followed it and it worked perfectly. It's late, and I'm lazy, so I'm just going to post a link.

I didn't put shaved chocolate on the top, but I did make the hot fudge sauce to put on slices. The hot fudge sauce was ok, but it wasn't Heggy's. I'm still on a quest to find a hot fudge sauce recipe comparable with Heggy's. I also made a strawberry sauce from scratch, for the non-chocolate lovers....but I was told that the strawberry did not go with the pie as much as I thought it should. I was told that caramel would have been a better topping option. 

Tuesday, September 03, 2013

Menu Plan

Again, super boring. Don't come to this blog for bling. I got no pictures and no witty comments. Just a list of days and some recipe links.

Wednesday: Beef and Rice Enchiladas

Thursday: Chicken Alfredo

Friday: Cheddarwurst and Mac and Cheese

Saturday: leftovers?

Sunday: Japanese Beef Bowls

Monday: Rotisserie Chicken, butter noodles, broc n cheese

Tuesday: Manicotti

MAKE AHEAD for Monday--

Bacon and Egg Cups

Pepperoni Pinwheels; Ham and Cheese Pinwheels.