Turtle ice cream

Turtle candies are made of caramel, pecans, and chocolate, just like this ice cream. (Salted caramel ice cream with a pecan-fudge swirl, that is what we have here.) And wikipedia says that Turtles used to be made just down the street in that weird pink house-looking shop in Temescal! Who knew. I'm not one of those folks who gets all excited about over-salting their desserts, but turns out salted caramel does work extremely well as a base for a fudge-nut sauce. Not pictured: dark-chocolate-covered pretzels for scooping it up.

salted caramel ice cream:
1.5 c sugar
4 T salted butter
1/4 t kosher sea salt (or taste)
1 c heavy cream
5 egg yolks
2 c whole milk (I used 1/2 c half-and-half + 1.5 c 1% milk)
1/2 t vanilla

Just click on the link and follow David Lebovitz's recipe. I was apprehensive because 1.5 c sugar is about twice as much as I normally use for a batch of ice cream this size, but it doesn't turn out too sweet. (It's sweet, of course, but not too sweet.) The amount of dairy fat works well too. If you have fancy salt, you can probably get away with using more, but this amount was quite enough for the fanciest salt we have around.

pecan-fudge swirl:
1/2 c sugar
1/3 c dark corn syrup
1/2 c water
6 T cocoa powder
1/2 t vanilla
1/2 c pecans, chopped

Heat the sugar, corn syrup, water, and cocoa powder together in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring to dissolve everything. Cook for 1 minute after it starts to simmer, then pour into a tupperware and stir in the vanilla. Store in the fridge until ready to use. When it's time to churn the ice cream, stir the chopped pecans into 1/2 c fudge sauce, and put the rest of the chocolate sauce in the fridge for another occasion.

to assemble:
Churn the ice cream until done (or for half an hour until it's time to go see Mean Streets with Chris and Lester, whichever comes first). In a flattish tupperware, layer 1/3 of the ice cream, then 1/2 of the pecan-fudge sauce, then 1/3 ice cream, then 1/2 sauce, then the rest of the ice cream. My ice cream was soupy enough after churning that just glopping the next layer of ice cream on top essentially swirled the lower layers together, but if yours is firmer then it might be nice to quickly run a knife through it to give it a bit of swirl. Freeze for 4 hr or overnight, and eat with dark-chocolate-covered pretzels.