Maple Pecan Cupcakes with Butter Pecan Buttercream Frosting for Paula Deen

Diving into these maple pecan cupcakes from the top, you’ll be met with butter pecan buttercream frosting that tastes exactly like butter pecan ice cream – so much so that you may be tempted to put it in a bowl and eat it with a spoon.  That wouldn’t be a bad choice, but then you would miss out on discovering how well the butter pecan pairs with the pecan-packed maple cupcakes made with a half cup of pure maple syrup.  Together, frosting and cupcake are pecan perfection!

I developed the maple pecan cupcake recipe for Paula Deen. So, you'll have to head over to Paula's website to learn how to make them.  Happy travels!

Butter Pecan Brandy Ice Cream From Ice Cream Happy Hour

When I first heard about the book Ice Cream Happy Hour, which contains 50 recipes for spiked ice cream, I had two questions:  How do you keep kids from eating it, and how does the ice cream set since alcohol doesn't typically freeze well?  Authors Valerie Lum and Jenise Addison don't answer question one (my answer is to hide the ice cream behind the frozen broccoli), but they do answer question two right in the preface. Mixing the alcohol with gelatin prior to stirring it into the ice cream allows the alcohol to freeze and yields a properly creamy end result (don't worry, the ice cream doesn't have the consistency of jello shots - you won't even notice the gelatin). 

Since butter pecan ice cream has always been a favorite of mine, I immediately knew that I wanted to try the butter pecan brandy ice cream.  The butter pecan brandy ice cream came out just as I had hoped: a cross between a traditional butter pecan ice cream and a strong egg nog.

I'm sharing the butter pecan brandy ice cream recipe below, but there are so many other flavors in Ice Cream Happy Hour that you might want to try - like Irish coffee ice cream, chocolate martini ice cream, and strawberry daiquiri ice cream.  I'll be giving a couple of copies of Ice Cream Happy Hour away later this week, so be sure to check back for the details.