Nothing Says "I Love You" Like Bacon Ice Cream
Posted by Heidi McDonald on Mon, Feb 14, 2011 @ 10:43 PM
Yep. When I showed my family the list of recipes under the Advanced Entertaining unit of Top Chef University, they unanimously voted for Bacon Ice Cream. This should not surprise anyone who's read this far. Our family loves us some bacon.
I got home from my night class at 10pm tonight, still needing to make this ice cream for the blog. I had no idea where to find dry ice at 10pm, so, was not going to have time to freeze it before I posted tonight. So, I can report on what it tastes like, frozen, tomorrow. For tonight, people had to taste it and "picture what this would taste like, frozen." Come on, admit it, you've licked the melted ice cream from the bottom of your dish before. It was kind of like that.
While we very much ARE bacon people, we aren't very much Valentine's Day people. Valentine's Day for my husband and I consisted today of me ridding the bedroom of stinkbugs (when I cut their heads off with scissors, they're dead and they don't stink), and he put five dollars down on an advance copy of Dragon Age 2. And I made everyone this ice cream, which won't be frozen until tomorrow. Ain't love grand?
I'm not sure what to make of the fact that my boys thought the stuff tasted like a Denny's Grand Slam, and my husband compared it to "what the burps taste like after you've eaten a McDonald's McGriddle sandwich." Maybe this is TMI, but I did promise off the bat to be honest with you guys about my family's reactions to these recipes. I think Richard Blais would be disappointed in us. Perhaps Kevin Gillespie would not be. He's a bacon guy.
The thing I love about bacon is the saltiness. Something about salty and sweet together makes me crazy. Chocolate-covered bacon is as much a life-changing snack as pretzels dipped in Nutella.
I put too much maple syrup in the mixture, I think, because deep down in my gut, I really wanted more "salty." Blais has you discarding the bacon once you have spent time flavoring the mixture with it. I would love to re-do this recipe, pre-frying the bacon untit it's nearly burnt, crumbling it up into little pieces, and keeping it in the ice cream. I would have preferred the taste that way, plus, it just felt really, really wrong to throw bacon away.
As of this writing, I have fully completed Top Chef University. Unless you count that whole, "ice cream not being frozen yet" thing. It feels really strange to be finished. I made 78 recipes to report on for you, but this is actually only about 1/3 of the recipes the program has to offer. I do fully intend to try out many of the others I've missed. And what may feel like an end is actually only the beginning of my newfound kitchen prowess, which I expect our family will benefit from for a long time to come. Tomorrow, I will offer some reflection on things I have learned with this program.
Hungrily yours,
Heidi in Pittsburgh