Memorial Day also seemed like a good time to make ice cream. Ice cream can be tough to make partial quantities of when it calls for things like eggs – how do you halve 3 egg yolks, for instance? I’m also not eating as many sweets as I used to, so a full recipe of ice cream is just too much for us to get through. With several people over, though, I knew that we wouldn’t have nearly so much left.
I decided to make Caramel Ice Cream from the Salted Caramel Ice Cream recipe from Cooking Light magazine. The link doesn’t tell you how to adapt the recipe, but you simply omit the salt garnish and only add ⅛ teaspoon of salt to the mixture.
This was really pretty easy to make. You scald the milk, gradually stir part of it in the egg yolks to temper them so that you don’t end up with cooked eggy pieces, and then add the milk and egg yolks to the pan. Cook the sugar, cream, and butter for 3 minutes, add salt, and then add to the yolk mixture. Heat it to 160F to cook the eggs thoroughly. Cool it completely before you try to turn it into ice cream. I was prepared, so I refrigerated mine overnight.
I have an electric ice cream maker that sits on the counter. It does an okay job of turning things into ice cream, but they’re always extremely soft once they’re done. I think this is just the way ice cream makers work – they churn the ice cream custard to make it creamy and frozen(ish), and then you have to put it in the freezer to have it firm up. I didn’t take that into account, and so we served the ice cream straight out of the ice cream basin. It was very soft and melty, and very, very sweet without the salt to balance the flavor. I don’t think this was a problem – this was just a very sweet, intense ice cream.
I liked this. Like I said, it was a very sweet, intense ice cream. It was very soft, even after being in the freezer. It’s not a creamy ice cream, since it doesn’t have very much cream in it. The texture is different, a little more slushy than creamy. Keep that in mind if you only like thick ice cream. I liked it, and I would think about making again. I would probably pair it with something like shortbread cookies, less sweet and without a dominant flavor, to balance out all the sugar.
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