Paula Deen’s Butter Pecan Ice Cream

Just before Mother’s Day, Jennifer acquired her new KitchenAid stand mixer. Every once in a while I see her glancing at it with an enamored look and hear a little sigh. There was an offer of a free ice cream attachment with the purchase of the mixer, which we gladly accepted. I had dreams of eating homemade ice cream throughout the summer. Well, there’s still a little summer left, so I thought I’d get on with it.

We saw a Paula Deen episode back then in which she made a simple butter pecan ice cream. I decided back then that I’d break in the ice creamer with that recipe. It’s not a traditional ice cream concoction by any stretch — there’s a box of pudding in it! And no cream! But, when in doubt, we trust Paula. She doesn’t make things that don’t taste good.

An admission.. it was late when I started this (Jennifer was mixing a cake batter) and I declared that I was going to wimp out on the pecans. They were supposed to be cooked in a tablespoon of butter in a saucepan. I knew this would unlock the pecany goodness within them. When I told Jennifer, she reassured me telling me it would be the 8:15 PM version of the recipe.

I mixed together a can of evaporated milk, 3 cups of whole milk, a teaspoon of vanilla extract, and a cup of sugar together in a big measuring bowl with a pour spout. I held the pudding out until I had the frozen mixer bowl out of the freezer and mounted on the mixer. I suspected that the mixture would be too dilute to thicken up as a pudding, but I didn’t want to take any chances on my first try. Other ice cream wisdom has the mixture sit in the fridge until it is closer to freezing temperature. Because of the pudding content (and Paula not telling me to), I didn’t chill the mixture, but poured it right into the mixer bowl, dasher already spinning.

The pecans were not to go in until 10 minutes into the mixing process. This gave me plenty of time to regret not preparing the pecans as Paula preached. It came to fruition when I realized that the ice cream was called butter pecan. I quickly melted butter and sauteed the pecans for a few minutes until Jennifer, several feet away, stopped what she was doing, took in a deep breath, and let me know I’d made the right decision. Since they were hot and the ice cream was thickening up, I put them in the freezer for a few minutes so as not to melt the ice cream when they were introduced.

I could tell that the ice creamer was just starting to lose its cool, but the contents were thick enough to transfer into a plastic tub and then into the freezer. In retrospect, putting the evaporated milk in the fridge the night before would chill the mixture and help the process.

It wasn’t completely set when we first tasted it, but that was more a factor of impatience (and the late hour) than the recipe. We tried it alongside a slice of Jennifer’s chocolate marble cake (which was oooh so good). The ice cream did taste remarkably like butter pecan ice cream from the store. The color was as rich as the flavor, both we think from the pudding. We enjoyed our first attempt with the ice cream attachment which is already in the freezer getting ready for round two.

4 comments September 5th, 2006