Bourbon Butterscotch Pecan

It was time to make new ice cream and I felt like making something more complex with multiple components. I had some buttered pecans in the freezer from the ice cream adventures of a few weeks ago that I wanted to use up, so that was going into the ice cream. Butter pecan is a very traditional flavor, and some of my books suggest pairing it with bourbon. I've made a bourbon butterscotch in the past that was well received, so I settled on that, a butterscotch ripple, and buttered pecans for my ice cream of the week.

Rating: 4 scoops

This was a delicious ice cream although I found the butterscotch ripple almost too sweet, which took away from the rest of the ice cream. However, the bourbon butterscotch and buttered pecans is a good combination worth repeating - but perhaps without the ripple next time.

To get this ice cream started, making a butterscotch with a little bit of bourbon was the first step. This was prepared separately from the custard to help burn off some of the alcohol from the bourbon (or else the final ice cream would be runny in the freezer) and to prevent the acidity of the brown sugar from curdling the milk. This cooled butterscotch was then whisked into the dairy, glucose, and egg yolk custard.

To make the butterscotch ripple, you start with a caramel and then stop the cooking by pouring in a cold ingredient - in this case, a cream-based mixture. The cream mixture contained rum to complement the caramel flavor and acidic lemon juice help to help balance the sweetness. I could taste the lemon juice in the finished ripple (although it wasn't bad) and still found the final ice cream overly sweet, so maybe next time I would consider using citric acid which would provide acidity without the lemon flavor.

With all the components ready to go, it was time to churn and assemble! The butterscotch ripple thickened up in the fridge so a slight warming helped make it more fluid and we were off to start putting the ice cream together!