Buttered Pecan Ice Cream

Recipe for homemade buttered pecan ice cream, old-fashioned and delicious. Plus, to pair with the ice cream, a simple recipe for Meringue Cookies, sweet and studded with pecans. Plus, an introduction to native Missouri pecans, smaller and sweeter than pecans from other regions. It’s time for the Show-Me State to show off its culinary gold: fingertip-tiny, syrup-sweet, native Missouri pecans. Missouri is the northernmost reach of pecan country. Our shorter season and colder climate produce nuts that are smaller, sweeter and richer than the southern brethren. The trees grow alongside fields and rivers, mostly in farm country near Brunswick, 50 crow-miles northwest of Columbia, and Nevada, 90 miles south of Kansas City. Many trees are 200 years old. These days, farm entrepreneurs plant groves. “For the grandchildren,” they laugh, since trees don’t produce nuts for 15 or 20 years. Tree by tree, the nuts are painstakingly harvested in November. Missouri pecans are Show-Me s