Hi!

Sometimes there is a long thought process behind the recipes I post, and other times it is something as simple as eating something then thinking “oooh I wonder how this would work as an ice cream.” Sometimes it turns out really well and others go straight to the frozen junk yard.

This is, thankfully, one of the happier instances. My favourite crack snack is spicy pecans roasted with brown sugar, cinnamon, bit of chili and occasionally I’ll throw in some rosemary, too. Usually I will chop the nuts up and just sprinkle over vanilla or chocolate ice cream, but I wanted the whole ice cream to taste like spicy pecans - and then I could drizzle hot fudge sauce over or the basil infused caramel sauce from my book!

This is also an ice cream I see myself eating with roasted peaches or maybe a cobbler or crumble later in the summer. I will take any excuse to eat ice cream. Not that I need an excuse, really. Oh and it would be a killer filling in an ice cream sandwich with oatmeal cookies! And that, ladies and gentlemen, is pretty much what it looks like inside my brain.

Spicy Pecan ice cream

500ml whole milk
175ml heavy cream
2-3 ancho chiles, split open and seeds removed
1 cinnamon stick
2 teaspoons vanilla extract or the empty pod of 1 vanilla bean
120g light brown sugar
50g glucose syrup
5 egg yolks
100g pecans toasted in the oven at 150C for 15 minutes

Fill a large bowl with cold water and ice cubes and set aside.

Add the whole milk, heavy cream and glucose to a heavy bottomed saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat. Add the cinnamon stick, vanilla and chiles, cover with a lid and let infuse for 30 minutes. Strain and discard the cinnamon stick and chiles, then reheat the infused milk until steaming hot.

Meanwhile whisk the egg yolks with the brown sugar until pale and airy. Ladle the hot milk mixture over the egg yolks while whisking rigorously. Pour the custard back into the saucepan and cook while stirring until the temperature reads 82-85C on an instant read thermometer. Add the hot pecans to the ice cream mixture and use an immersion blender to emulsify.

Immediately pour into a clean bowl and place in the ice bath. Cool the custard to 5-10C, stirring occasionally, before passing through a strainer into a lidded container. Season to taste with a pinch of salt.

Chill in the refrigerator at least 6 hours, preferably overnight, then churn in an ice cream maker according to instructions.

*If using a Ninja creamI, freeze the custard in the containers and process in the creamI. I find the texture improves by freezing and processing the ice cream twice.