Inspired by conversations on the Food52 Hotline, we're sharing tips and tricks that make navigating all of our kitchens easier and more fun.
Today: Your new favorite last-minute dessert.
A common problem I have around the holidays is craving foods from the South, where I’m from. And since I live on the West Coast, it’s nearly impossible to find them.
One of those foods is butter pecan ice cream. Yes, Baskin Robbins sells it and there are a few places up north that carry it, but I’m talking about the fresh-churned kind my grandmother would make on special holidays and birthdays for me growing up in Mississippi. It was soft, rich, and loaded with way more buttered pecans than any store-bought version can give me. The taste of the actual ice cream wasn’t even all that important -- it was all those pecans!
My solution is to make my own buttered and candied pecans -- a relatively easy task -- and then mix them into store-bought vanilla ice cream when I get the craving for it. It lets me add as many pecans as I want, guarantees the ice cream will be soft, and if there are leftover pecans, well, who doesn’t love a candied nut at the holidays?
And best of all, there’s no recipe here, you can just eyeball everything. To start, toss enough pecans into your largest skillet to cover the bottom in a single layer, and place it over medium-high heat. Cook the pecans, tossing occasionally, until they smell nutty and are lightly toasted. Then spoon in a few hearty dollops of butter, enough to coat the pecans and have a little pooling around them in the skillet.
Let that bubble away, stirring here and there, until the butter begins to brown, and then sprinkle over some sugar, enough to blanket the pecans in an even snow-dusting.
Add a pinch of salt, a splash of bourbon, and stir the whole mass together until it’s evenly combined and there’s no more dry sugar.
When the syrup around the pecans begins to thicken and bubble up, pour the pecans onto a sheet of foil, and spread out evenly. Let cool completely, and then store in a plastic bag until you’re ready for dessert.
When it’s time to indulge, let your store-bought ice cream soften at room temperature for about 10 minutes, and then stir in pecans to your taste and serve up the treat in bowls. I like to serve each scoop with the smallest sprinkling of sea salt, but a drizzle of caramel sauce also helps things out tremendously.
What are your favorite last-minute desserts? Let us know in the comments!
Photos by James Ransom
Choose your holiday adventure! Our Automagic Menu Maker is here to help.
View Maker
Written by: Ben Mims
Popular on Food52
7 Comments
To answer the question about last minute desserts: my husband is from the South, too, and loves everything pecan, especially butter pecan ice cream. I recently made a pecan praline caramel sauce (mrslarkin's, from her pumpkin pie ice cream recipe) served over vanilla ice cream, which was a huge hit. You've inspired me to stir into vanilla ice cream some of the maple olive oil toasted pecans I've been using since last year for my nut crescents - http://food52.com/recipes/25462-maple-olive-oil-praline-crescents . They won't be buttery, but the olive oil + maple + very light salt is magical. My hack for pumpkin pie ice cream is to use the deeply-flavored pumpkin butter from Paul Virant's "Preservation Kitchen" (roasted with butter, intensely evocative of a superior pumpkin pie filling) into vanilla ice cream.
When ice cream is not involved, my go-to last minute dessert is a crisp. Every year, I put up all kinds of fruits, especially blueberries from the bushes lining my front walkway, in light syrup. My pantry never lets me down. ;o)
See what other Food52 readers are saying.