Bourbon pecan ice cream

Bourbon pecan ice cream

From “Lee Bailey’s CountryDesserts”

Ingredients

2½ cups half and half

1/3 cup sugar

1/3 cup brown sugar

1 cup chopped pecans

2 to 3 tablespoons bourbon

Method

Combine half and half and sugars in a small saucepan. Heat over low heat until sugars are dissolved. (Avoid boiling the liquid; you don’t want it curdled or it will affect the texture of the ice cream.) Cool, then chill completely.

Stir in pecans and bourbon. Turn mixture into an ice cream maker and process according to directions. Freeze until firm.

Rating: The first licks of the scraper after turning this mixture into a container for final freezing were wondrous. Nice texture, great flavor. When it came time to actually eat this, I asked if perhaps there were too many pecans in it. I received an emphatic no. I'm not quite so sure. I used very finely chopped pecans; maybe I would have been happier with larger chunks. Either way, this is still pretty decadent ice cream, and worth making over and over to experiment. Fair warning: Freezing seems to almost concentrate the booziness.