Maple Bacon Ice Cream

For the candied bacon:
Preheat oven to 350ºF. Cook bacon in oven for 10 minutes. Remove bacon from oven and brush on sugar. Place back in oven for additional 10 minutes.

Cool on wire rack until room temperature. Chop into small pieces and refrigerate.

For the ice cream:
Place 1 cup cream in a metal bowl and place over ice. In a medium saucepan, place remaining cream, milk, sugar, maple syrup and salt. Cook over medium heat until everything melts together.

Whisk egg yolks in a separate metal bowl. Slowly ladle heated mixture to egg yolks. (Important: While adding mixture, make sure you are furiously whisking the mixture to prevent eggs from cooking!) Once half the warmed milk mixture is mixed with egg yolks, pour ice cream and egg yolk mixture into saucepan. Continue to heat mixture over medium low heat until it thickens enough to cover the back of a spoon and leave a trace of your finger.

Once custard reaches proper thickness, strain mixture into cream set aside in the ice bath to stop the cooking process. You may see some small bits of cooked egg, but that is okay as long as you strain the mixture.

Stir vanilla extract into mixture and wait for it to reach at least room temperature so that it is safe to put in the fridge. At that point, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate anywhere from 2 hours to overnight.

Freeze custard in your ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions. Add candied bacon to ice cream 1 minute before removing from ice cream maker. Freeze overnight.

Makes about 1 quart.