Flavor of the Week: Maple Bacon Walunt

   Another week has elapsed in my quest, in which I ventured to great heights. To combat my diligent foe, Isie, I decided to make inroads on a flavor that is quickly becoming a permanent one in my hidden list of "Future Flavors". These flavors are a treasure trove, a chest of frozen gold where I keep my most sacred and tested flavors that will someday be in my scoop shop. Alas and alack for that glorious day, when the world will be shown what true ice cream is, and will be able to tangibly taste it in all its creaminess and wonder...

Maple Bacon Walnut - smooth, creamy maple ice cream with bits of candied bacon and buttery salted walnuts.

   In contrast with last week's fruit flavor, which cast an icy barrier over the rich creaminess inside, I sought after a flavor that would refute all of Isie's efforts, rendering him useless and absent. This flavor was Maple. As some of you might attest, this was one of my creamiest flavors to date. The maple with its intrinsic sugary density provided body and rich support the my normal cream base. I only use the purest of ingredients, and Vermont maple syrup is the purest of them all. Vermont is to syrup as is Chilton County to peaches. Ok, Vermont may have a slight edge in that comparison, but nevertheless, the syrup of the Green Mountain State is king.

   It was a rather simple base to procure, but difficult to get the right balance. What I sought after in my ice cream was a bold maple flavor; unlike Maple Blondie by B&J, which tastes like frozen sugar because they add sugar AND maple syrup in copious amounts. The key to a perfectly balanced ice cream is to be flexible and adaptable when creating the ice cream. If adding a sugar-dense substance like maple syrup, then the sugar added to the custard base has to be frightfully low, or nil. Adding both will leave consumers with a base that dominates the palate, and numbs the taste toward anything else. Adding only maple allows it to have an open avenue to meld with the cream without exterior competition. I wanted bold, but not sugary override bold. As mentioned previously, the maple base was dream-like creamy, a land flowing with milk and maple. The end result was exactly what I was seeking, and it paved a smooth, sweet road for the add-ins.

   I chose walnuts because 'Maple Walnut' just speaks Classic. Although maple ice cream is a relatively recent discovery and has now become trendy, its combination with walnuts is a colloquial friendship of sweet and tart. For the walnuts I use a recipe given to me by my sister-in-law's grandmother, but I have since tweaked it slightly. It includes laving the nuts in butter, and sprinkling with a good, coarse salt, then sliding them into the oven for a few minutes to get that roasted sensation throughout. Doing it this way will literally make the walnuts melt in your mouth. Bathing them in melted butter, then heating them up, allows the butter to seep into the dry nuts, causing an explosion of flavor in the mouth; the mouth doesn't know how to handle it, so it instinctively gets rid of the intruder by the quickest means possible: melting it. The walnuts provided an excellent contrast to the sweet base with their salty tartness, which added a welcomed 'kick'.

   The idea of bacon in ice cream scares many of the fair-weatherers, as they run away screaming for their cookies and creams and mint chocolate chips. But for those of us who stand up and say, "I want more out of my ice cream. I want to 'boldly go where no man has gone before,'" then bacon seems reasonable, even natural. Pairing bacon with maple was not a difficult choice to make. It came almost immediately when I decided upon maple. It was like recreating Saturday morning (next time I'll throw in walnut waffles to replicate that wholesome, sanctified morning more aptly). Candied bacon in any form of dessert has most definitely become trendy, to the point where I want to step away from it...almost. Just look at any 'hip' dessert joint in NYC, and you'll find bacon stuck somewhere it doesn't belong, like cookies or cupcakes, or...ice cream...because it's cool and weird. It's like being a Modernist painter or writer at the turn of the century, doing normal, familiar things in totally un-normal, counter-cultural ways. And just like in the early 1900's, it still scares people away because people can't like what they don't understand. This is what bacon does to the world, it divides it. I chose to candy the bacon because it enhances the flavor, combining a caramelization with meaty smoke. It was a marvelous outcome. The hint of smoke that exploded each time a piece of bacon rose up in the spoonful was heavenly. It was crisp and sweet and smokey and killer.

   This flavor was meant to confuse the mind. It was a blend of everything the mind works through when eating various foods: sweet, salty, savory, tart (instead of the normal sour that goes with this list). My quest was exponentially furthered in its direction this week. Creating anything abnormal, that turns out tasty, always points me in the right direction: the path to unparalleled flavors. Thanks for reading.

-Reese O'Shirey Esq.