>>I love ice cream, and I really love it with caramel, particularly salted caramel, and some pecans.

And the mead that I'm going to pair with this goes perfectly with this particular recipe.

So I'm going to start off by making a little custard, a little ice cream custard.

Now, what I wanna do right now is put four egg yolks into my pan.

So let's just separate out (slow relaxing music) four nice egg yolks.

One.

(shell cracking) There we go.

(slow relaxing music continues) Oh, these are gorgeous eggs.

Farm fresh.

Make sure you get as much of the white out as you can, so you don't end up with any clumps in your ice cream.

Now, to those egg yolks, I want to just whisk in about half a cup of white sugar just plain old (whisk whirring) castor sugar.

Granulated sugar.

And what we're looking for is just a nice little lemon color here, mixing it all together.

(slow relaxing music continues) Yeah.

(whisk whirring) Now, I have one cup of hot milk, just before it came to a boil, it's just slightly scalded, and I want to pour that in ever so slowly, because if you pour in too quickly, all of your eggs will scramble.

So just a little bit at a time.

(slow relaxing music continues) There we go.

(whisk whirring) And now I think we're safe, we can put in the rest.

And then let's turn on the heat to a medium high.

(igniter flicking) Now what I'm looking for is about 165 degrees.

I don't wanna bring this to a boil, but I just wanna bring it up to nice and hot.

That way I know all the sugar is melted on the inside, and we have a nice creamy texture in our ice cream.

(whisk whirring) And you can use a meat thermometer for this, it works great, just make sure that when you do it, lean the pan to the side, and don't let the thermometer hit the bottom of the pan.

So let's just check to see where we are.

Okay, we're at about 140, so I'm just gonna give it another minute or so.

(whisk whirring) Now let's check.

Nailed it, 164.

All right, so now we wanna remove that from the heat.

And I'm going to whisk in one cup of heavy whipping cream.

(whisk whirring) (cream pouring) And two teaspoons of vanilla.

Now, as you know, this is a base for any ice cream, you could do anything with it at this point that you want, but homemade vanilla ice cream with the combination of caramel and pecans is just my favorite.

So we're gonna let this cool, and then I'm gonna put it over in the ice cream machine while I make some caramel sauce.

So while our ice cream is freezing, let's make some caramel sauce.

So I've started with one cup of sugar and a quarter cup of water in my pan, and I just want to make sure that comes, first of all, to a simmer, and then I'll walk you through making sure that it comes to the right color, which is honey.

So before it has a chance to boil, let's mix that sugar in.

Mm.

And we just want to get that melted at this point, it'll look foggy, it's just typical of sugar in water.

It's not gonna look clear for a while, and then once it's clear, then you'll start to see all of these changes in colors.

So it'll start off with just a hint of a tan, and then once it becomes golden, you know it's just ready for caramel.

(whisk whirring) Now, the whole time you're making caramel sauce, make sure you're scraping down the sides of the pan, or you'll end up with a crystal and chunkiness in your caramel.

So you wanna make sure that you keep it going back into the pan, back into the pan, there will be a point at which it starts to bubble up, and you can't release it from the sides of the pan.

At that point, it's really best to leave it alone, so it doesn't fall down in.

And I see a little simmer starting right on the edge of my pan.

So the simmer is when all of those little tiny bubbles start on the side, then we get to the boil stage.

And once we get to boil, that's when you're gonna have to make sure that you're pressing down in the pan.

Now, we're just starting to boil.

We're starting to get past that tiny simmer on the side, pretty soon the bubbles will be coming up off of the bottom of the pan into the center.

So right now, we want to make sure we're scraping down, and don't stir it at this point.

When you stir it, it just makes it rise up even more.

So let's just try to keep those bubbles, and that coagulation off the side.

All right, we're getting really good boiling here, and at this point, we don't wanna let it burn.

We want to just watch it as it starts to turn its color.

So right now, it's still a little foggy but pretty soon it's going to be very clear.

Then the clarity will make its way into a really beautiful color.

It's also reducing at this point, so that sugar is becoming syrup, becomes very intense.

And you can see on the edges of my pan that it's really difficult to get that sugar off now.

At this point, we just leave it alone, because if we try to press that sugar down, we have little crystaling sugar pieces that will make our caramel kind of chunky, and almost feel like there's glass in it.

And at this point, it's clear.

You can see that clarity right there all the way to the bottom of the pan.

Now, I'm starting to see just a little hint of color.

It almost begins, like just a little tanness, like a tan line.

And then pretty soon, it's going to become a beautiful honey color.

At this point, we're going to add our butter quickly, one to two pieces at a time.

Now, at this point, the color change is going to be pretty immediate so it's going to go from that light pale color to a honey almost instantly.

So make sure you're watching that happen, because if you let it go too far, that it tastes like a burned sugar caramel, and that's not what we're looking for for vanilla ice cream.

And now the honey color starts, be ready with your whisk, and be ready with nice, cold butter.

So this is a stick of butter and cut it in small chunks.

Now, I'll tell you, when you put the first couple of chunks of butter in your very, very hot sugar, it's going to bubble up really, really hard.

So be ready, ready to whisk it down, and don't be alarmed, be ready to step back, but you want a pan large enough that you can handle putting the butter in, and the bubbling to happen.

So we have a lovely little honey color right here, and now, I'm going to start putting in that cold butter.

(whisk whirring) And you can see that reaction.

All of a sudden, we start getting this very thick, thick sauce with lots and lots of aeration.

And you want to whisk in each bit of the butter so you don't have a runny sauce, all while over the heat.

Let's just turn that back to a medium heat now to make sure we don't burn that butter, or the sauce.

(whisk whirring) And you can kind of see as those pieces start to melt, just keep whisking, keep going.

And then when you don't see any butter pieces anymore, it's time to put in a half cup of heavy whipping cream.

(whisk whirring) Mm, that looks great.

Okay, now I'm going to remove it from the heat now.

And you get this very thick, buttery sauce.

And now I just want to whisk in that heavy cream.

(whisk whirring) (sauce sizzling) And initially it looks like it's just not gonna work, it's not gonna go in there, but it does, and it makes this gorgeous creamy caramel.

Mm, look at that, it's all coming together.

It's sort of like making fudge.

It looks like chocolate milk, and then all of a sudden, you have amazing fudge.

All right, same with caramel.

Look at that color, it's just so beautiful.

A genuine caramel color.

(whisk whirring) And now I want to put in one teaspoon of vanilla, and just a pinch of salt at this point.

Just a pinch.

(whisk whirring) Now, let's check our ice cream, and assemble that beautiful sundae.

So we have some beautiful custard ice cream here.

It is so good.

And I let my caramel get a little cold.

A little cool, you can use hot caramel, but I like to use just about room temperature caramel.

Mm, it's so good.

(slow relaxing music) Look how thick that is.

It's just beautiful, and then we're gonna serve it with some toasted pecans.

I just stuck these in the oven at about 425 degrees for about six minutes, and they are amazing.

And then just a touch of flaked sea salt.

(slow relaxing music continues) All right, been dying for this.

Just a little bit of ice cream, and a little bit of caramel.

(slow relaxing music continues) Mm, it's so yummy.

And we're gonna serve this with a very traditional mead, this is just straight honey wine made with beautiful Virginia honey.

(slow relaxing music continues) Mm, you can't get much better than that at the end of a meal.

So give this a try, it's a wonderful recipe.

So easy to make, and everybody will think you took hours.

(slow relaxing music ends) (upbeat music)