Butter Pecan Ice Cream

I got this recipe from this book called 'Comfort Food' which I got from M&S on Christmas sale. I really love this book as it has this amazing collection of guilty pleasure recipes which will be handy in time of stress and depression..hehe

This is the only ice cream recipe in the book and the picture looks really good so I just had to give it a try. You can see the outcome from the picture. At first, I wasnt sure to post this recipe because the result wasnt impressive. But then I thought this was my first time making ice cream from scratch and I wanted to capture the history and share my experience..I know it sounds pathetic but oh well....

Enough talking crap, here goes the instructions..

Ingredients:
Double cream 350ml
Milk 175ml
6 egg yolks
Caster sugar 50g
Cooled claridied butter 115g
Roughly chopped pecans 225g (I only used half of it tho..if you are a 'nutter', add them all ;-) )

How to make:
1) In a saucepan, bring 125ml cream and all the milk to boil in medium-high heat. Once done, leave the mixture to cool completely.
2) Using electric mixer, beat egg yolks with 4 tablespoon of sugar until pale and think enough to hold a ribbon when lifted. Put the mixture aside.
3) Combine the remaining cream and sugar and bring just to the boil. Pour half of this hot cream into the egg yolk-sugar mixture and stir until well blend. Heat until small bubbles appear around the edge. Add the clarified butter and stir until it melts. Pour the mixture into a bowl and let it cool completely. Stir occasionally.
4) Pour the chilled cream-milk mix from 1) with the mixture from 3) and stir until blended. Pour this mixture into an ice cream machine and freeze according to manufacturer's guide. Stir in the pecans when the mixture is 3/4 frozen.
Alternative method if you dont have ice-cream machine:
Pour the mixture into a freezer-proof container, cover and freeze for an hour or until partially frozen. Remove from freezer and beat with fork until smooth. Re-cover and returns to freezer. Repeat the process and then add the pecans. Returns to freezer and it's ready when it has firm texture.


Verdict: The ice cream turned out ok and it tasted like ice cream...thank god for that. I can definitely tasted the butter and the pecans. But to be perfectly honest, it wasnt like what I imagined or in other words, I wasnt very impressed with it. I think it was a bit too creamy and too nutty. But hey, this was my first try. I'm not giving up on this recipe yet. Next time, I'll improvise and perfecting it. As for the texture, it was a bit hard to scoop out. But I blamed it on the absence of an important tool - an ice cream maker machine. I was too lazy to keep stirring the ice cream every hour.