Ice Cream/Frozen Desserts
Butter Pecan Ice Cream—Without the Ice Cream Machine
This week’s Big Little Recipe is a fuss-free take on a summertime favorite.
A Big Little Recipe has the smallest-possible ingredient list and big everything else: flavor, creativity, wow factor. That means five ingredients or fewer—not including water, salt, black pepper, and certain fats (like oil and butter), since we're guessing you have those covered. Psst, did you hear we’re coming out with a cookbook? We’re coming out with a cookbook!
It should come as little surprise that the path toward better butter pecan ice cream doesn’t start with cream or milk or eggs or sugar or any number of other ingredients. It starts with butter and pecans—and how you use them. Not with a shrug but with feeling.
As in other recipes, you will melt butter, add lots of pecans, and let them leisurely toast until your kitchen smells like there might be a pie in the oven. This simple step delivers assertively flavored nuts, polka-dotting the ice cream, adding crunch-crunch-crunch amid all the plushness.
But unlike other recipes, you won’t stop at that, not yet. Adventure is out there.
Into the emptied pan, toss in another hunk of butter, to melt, then huff, then puff, then brown. Stay close. Brown butter goes from just right to oh no in less time than it takes for me to type this sentence. But when you get it just right? You win more buttery aroma, more buttery flavor, more butteriness, period.
The pecans, too, we’re using more than once. Because while roasty nuts get a lot of hooting and hollering, raw nuts are worthy in their own way. Milky and mild, not unlike sweet cream. Which, now that you mention it, we’re also using. So why not put the two together?
You don’t need an ice cream machine for this recipe. Nor do you need eggs or granulated sugar or brown sugar. Because instead of making a custard, chilling it, churning it, and freezing it, we’re opting for a no-churn (aka no-fuss) template: condensed milk plus whipped cream.
The whipping part usually involves a hand mixer, or stand mixer, or whisk and strong arm. But today, a humble blender will do all the hard work: First, by blitzing pecans into powder. Next, by introducing this pecan powder to cold cream. And finally, by metamorphosing this pecan cream into whipped pecan cream.
This nutty floof not only simulates the airiness of an ice cream churner. It also ensures that every mouthful of ice cream is overloaded with pecan—pecanier, pecaniest—flavor.
And yes, you can and should make this whipped pecan cream on its own, to plop on any cake, especially chocolate. Or load up one of those flimsy foil pie tins and throw it at a loved one’s face. How fun would that be?
| 3 | tablespoons unsalted butter, divided |
| 1 1/2 | cups (171 grams) pecan pieces, divided |
| Kosher salt | |
| 1 | (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk |
| 2 | teaspoons vanilla extract |
| 2 | cups heavy cream |
| 3 | tablespoons unsalted butter, divided |
| 1 1/2 | cups (171 grams) pecan pieces, divided |
| Kosher salt |
| 1 | (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk |
| 2 | teaspoons vanilla extract |
| 2 | cups heavy cream |
Written by: Emma Laperruque
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16 Comments
I'm thinking you could use any really good toffee recipe (I like this one: https://food52.com/recipes/2143-scottish-toffee but for this purpose, I would leave out all the chocolate, of course), and finely chop the toffee after it is fully cooled. I'd use some in place of the pecans in the recipe - adding the brown butter, though, for extra deliciousness -- but I'd want lots of bits of it stirred into the ice cream at the end. Just discussing this makes me want to go make some right now! ;o)
Thank you Food52, and Emma, for sharing this? Looking forward to other easy ice cream recipes that do not require an ice cream maker and have only a short list of ingredients.
To answer your question: This summer (and spring, as both are currently represented in my freezer, right now) we'll also be enjoying Dori Sanders' No-Churn Lemon Ice Cream https://food52.com/recipes/77250-dori-sanders-no-churn-fresh-lemon-ice-cream and Nigella Lawson's No-Churn Coffee Ice Cream https://food52.com/recipes/30285-nigella-lawson-s-one-step-no-churn-coffee-ice-cream - both "Genius" recipes well deserving of that honor. I served the lemon last night in fact to company, atop this excellent cardamom cake (also a Genius recipe) https://food52.com/recipes/85494-cardamom-cake-recipe-niloufer-ichaporia-king . I'm looking forward to making this butter pecan! ;o)
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