Makin' Bacon. . . Ice Cream, that is.

I woke up on Saturday morning to overcast skies, a raging case of PMS, and the knowledge that I was a mere 5 days shy of my thirty first birthday. All of these things. . .do not want.

But then I settled in to watch some Food Network and do my normal Saturday type housework, and I saw Paula Deen making a “Brunch Burger” topped with bacon and a fried egg and sandwiched between two glazed Krispy Kreme donuts.

I spent some time debating with myself whether this was the best or worst idea ever. On the one hand, I heart the sweet/savory combo. On the other, it’s a fucking hamburger sandwiched between two donuts.

Ultimately I decided that it might be the best and worst idea ever, and that like Paula’s 800+ calorie tasty treat, there were two sides to my current predicament. True, I was bloated and would soon be old, but at the same time, I was alive and not pregnant. Holla!

So I decided to celebrate in a way that would honor the grim weather, the water retention, Paula’s bad idea burger and the thing I cherish most in life: Bacon.

In short: I finally got around to making the bacon ice cream. I can’t believe it took this long.

I went with this recipe for Pecan-Brown Sugar and Bacon Ice Cream from The Splendid Table’s archives, because a) the ingredients sounded reminiscent of the Praline Bacon I enjoyed at Elizabeth’s in New Orleans this summer, and b) Public Radio has never steered me wrong.

Well, except that once.

The mise en place:



As you can see, you’ll need about 3 cups of heavy cream, a cup of milk, a cup of chopped pecans, and a pound of bacon. Yes, a pound of bacon. You’ll also need 4 egg yolks, but I had put the eggs away before I remembered that I needed a mise en place photo, and forgot to take them back out.

So first you cook, blot, and chop your pound of bacon.

The directions didn’t specify a cooking method, so use whatever your standard preferred method is. I oven cooked the bacon, because it’s easier to do it that way when you’re cooking a great deal of bacon, and you don’t get quite the lingering “hey, I just cooked an entire pound of bacon in my really small apartment” smell that you do if you fry it.

Then you combine the cream, milk, and sugar in a saucepan over medium-high heat

Now, I used skim milk in this recipe for two reasons. First, it’s what I normally buy, and I get sick of making ice cream and having all these random little cartons of cream and whole milk going bad in my fridge. Second, we’ve already got 3 cups of heavy cream and a pound of bacon in there. It seemed like a good idea to cut back on the fat content anywhere we could. BUT: I will admit that it may have affected the final texture. More on that later.

Once the sugar has dissolved and combined with the cream and milk, you’re going to get a liquid that looks like this:

And it’s going to taste so good that you’re going to think to yourself, “um, maybe I should just quit while I’m ahead, and sit in front of the TV drinking this delicious sugary cream straight from the pan while I eat handfuls of cooked, chopped bacon.” Don’t do it, man. Bad scene.

Anyway, then you take your four egg yolks and beat them until they’re smooth. And then you whisk in a cup of the sugar/cream mixture slowly, so that the eggs don’t scramble. This makes your eggs turn a slightly unattractive greeny/browny/yellow:

But whatever—they’re just getting dumped into the pot with the rest of the cream mixture anyway. Stir that for about 6-ish minutes until you get a custard that coats the back of a wooden spoon, but not so long that the mixture boils. Dump it all into a bowl, and let it cool completely.

(That was supposed to show you how nicely the custard coated my spoon, but the custard color is too close to the spoon color for it to really come across). If you’re like me, and you’re an impatient bitch who really wants her bacon ice cream and wants it to be done so she can go with her super hot date to see Step Up 2: The Streets at the early show (because as I mentioned at the start of this post, I’m old), you may want to chill the custard in the fridge for 40 minutes or so to help bring the temperature down.

Once the mixture is chilled, dump in the chopped pecans and the pound of bacon.

Nom nom nom.

Then you put it in your ice cream maker, and let it do its thing for 30 minutes or so. Et Voila:

When it got to this point, I sent an e-mail informing several people that I was never leaving the house again, that I was just going to stay at home and make love to my bacon ice cream. Because it’s SO GOOD. It does—as I anticipated—taste remarkably like the praline bacon I had this summer at Elizabeth’s, only in ice cream form, and therefore even more awesome.

This is the finished product after freezing overnight:

Splendid Table says that you should let the ice cream soften slightly before serving to showcase the ice cream’s flavor, and I have to agree—I probably scooped this too early, and it was a little grainier than I normally like (though still delicious). Also, as I mentioned previously, the texture could be due to the totally low fat content caused by using skim milk.

But whatever. It’s sweet, it’s salty, it’s delicious, and it’s totally me. In fact, the only way it could possibly be more me is if you deep fried it and served it with a chocolate-bourbon sauce.


Hm . . . .