The ice cream is a bourbon vanilla base with
butter-roasted pecans and salted caramel mixed in. I couldn’t find a recipe for
exactly what I wanted online, so I cobbled something together using ideas from
a few different sites.
Small Confession: This week’s recipe is also happening in
part because, rookie gardener that I am, I seem to have planted a few too many
zucchini plants this year, and now my kitchen is bursting with summer squash – like,
have-fun-dealing-with-3-new-ripe-zucchini-every-day type bursting. It’s almost more than I can handle. Almost.
Okay, this one has a lot of steps, so buckle up.
Ingredients for both ice cream and sandwich components prepped and ready.
The pecans after being roasted in butter and sprinkled with sea salt. When they were finished, my kitchen felt like a salty, nutty sauna, but they smelled (and tasted) so good I didn't care.
Sandwich cake tops and bottoms cooling on a wire rack and waiting for their filling.
My first attempt at making this ice cream didn’t work
because my kitchen was so hot the custard wouldn’t set up in the frozen bowl
attached to my mixer. In fact, said bowl melted entirely in twenty minutes, and
the consistency of the batter had hardly thickened at all at that point. In
retrospect, the five tablespoons of booze mixed into the custard probably didn’t help speed along the
freezing process either. Everything
was put on hold for the night while I re-froze the mixing bowl, and for the
second try, I hauled my equipment down to the basement where the temperature always seems to hover near a balmy 65 degrees. I
flipped the mixer on, and, half an hour later, a very soft version of ice cream
had appeared. Good enough!
Adding the variegates to the bourbon vanilla base was a
bit harrowing since I could literally see my hard-won, barely-frozen ice cream
melting before my eyes. I layered in the nuts and caramel in a manner that
some may describe as ‘slapdash,’ but everything looked real pretty by the end,
so I’m not too worried about it.
After a few hours in the freezer, the ice cream was
fairly well set and ready to fulfill its destiny as zucchini cake sandwich
filling. And once the zucchini cakes are gone, I will be happily finishing off the rest of it on its own, or perhaps mixing a scoop into my coffee as a summer morning treat. As I took these pictures, the ice cream became progressively meltier, so I saw this as a natural excuse to put down the camera already and eat mine as fast as I could.
Zucchini Nut Bread Sandwich Cookies
Ingredients
1 cup all-purpose
flour
1 ¼
teaspoons ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon
baking soda
½ teaspoon
baking powder
¼ teaspoon coarse
salt
1 stick unsalted
butter, room temperature
½ cup
granulated sugar
½ cup
packed light-brown sugar
1 large egg
½ teaspoon
pure vanilla extract
1 cup finely grated
zucchini
1 cup old-fashioned
rolled oats
½ cup
chopped toasted walnuts
Directions
Sift flour, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, and ¼
teaspoon salt into a bowl.
Beat butter and the sugars until pale and fluffy, then beat
in egg and vanilla.
Beat flour mixture into butter mixture. Mix in zucchini,
oats, and walnuts.
Refrigerate until firm, about 1 hour.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees, then using a 1½-inch
ice cream scoop (about 2 tablespoons), drop dough onto parchment-lined baking
sheets, spacing about 2 inches apart.
Bake until edges are golden, about 17 minutes. Let cool
on a wire rack.
Bourbon Ice Cream
with Salty Butter Pecans and Caramel
Ingredients
2 cups heavy whipping cream
2 cups half and half
½
cup nonfat dry milk powder
6 large egg yolks
½
cup sugar
¼
cup (packed) dark brown sugar
½ teaspoon coarse kosher salt, divided
5 Tbsp bourbon
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
2 cups coarsely chopped pecans
1 Tbsp butter
½ cup salted caramel sauce (I used a jar of Smucker’s –
feel free to make your own if you’re a masochist with time on your hands)
Directions
Bring first 3 ingredients to simmer in
heavy large saucepan over medium-high heat, stirring until milk powder
dissolves completely. Remove from heat.
Combine egg yolks, sugar, brown sugar,
and ¼ teaspoon coarse salt in large bowl; whisk until thick and blended.
Pour about one third of the hot cream
mixture into yolk mixture and whisk until blended, then slowly add the
remaining cream mixture and continue whisking. Return combined mixture to same
saucepan.
Stir over medium-low heat until custard
thickens enough to leave path on back of spoon when finger is drawn across and
temperature registers 175°F to 178°F.
Remove from heat. Mix in bourbon and
vanilla extract.
Refrigerate custard uncovered until
cold, stirring occasionally, at least 3 hours.
While the custard cools, cook pecans and butter in
a small skillet over medium heat, stirring constantly, 10-12 minutes or until
toasted and fragrant. Spread pecans on parchment paper, and toss with remaining
¼ teaspoon kosher salt; allow to cool completely.
When
custard has chilled sufficiently, pour mixture into freezer container of a
1-qt. electric ice-cream maker, and freeze according to manufacturer's
instructions. (Instructions and times will vary.)
Stir pecans and caramel sauce into prepared
ice-cream mixture. Transfer finished ice cream to an airtight container or a
loaf pan covered tightly with aluminum foil; freeze 3 to 4 hours or until firm.
Zucchini Nut Ice
Cream Sandwiches
Ingredients
Zucchini Nut Bread Sandwich Cookies (see above)
Bourbon Ice Cream with Salty Butter Pecans and Caramel
(see above)
Directions
Once ice cream is set and zucchini nut bread cookies are
cool, spoon a generous scoop of ice cream onto zucchini bread cookie and
sandwich with another cookie.
Place in freezer and let set for 1 hour before serving. Try real hard not to eat them all at once
Place in freezer and let set for 1 hour before serving. Try real hard not to eat them all at once
