Salted caramel ice cream

Dark caramel with butter and sea salt in a smooth egg custard. Bittersweet and addictive.

The flavour depends on how far you take the caramel: pale caramel just tastes sweet, while deep amber caramel has bitterness and notes of coffee and nuts. Butter and cream stop the caramel cooking, and salt balances its sweetness. Caramelised sugar is less sweet than ordinary sugar, so the ice cream isn’t cloying even though it contains plenty of sugar. The yolks thicken the mix and give it a silky texture.

Type: Classic cream ice cream · Servings: 8 · Difficulty: Challenging

Equipment

Ingredients

  • 160 g granulated sugar (sucrose)
  • 20 g butter 82 % (salted or unsalted)
  • 350 g whipping cream 33 % (warmed)
  • 3 g salt (sea salt or fleur de sel)
  • 500 g whole milk 3.5 %
  • 25 g skimmed milk powder
  • 30 g dextrose (glucose powder)
  • 80 g egg yolk (4 yolks)

Making the mix

  1. Warm the cream in a small pan (don’t boil it). Warm the milk with the milk powder and dextrose in a second pan and stir to dissolve.
  2. Spread the sugar in an even layer in a wide, heavy-based pan and let it melt over a medium heat. Don’t stir — just swirl the pan.
  3. When the caramel is deep amber and just starting to smoke, take it off the heat and stir in the butter.
  4. Carefully pour in the hot cream a little at a time — the caramel will bubble up fiercely and the steam can burn. Stir until smooth; melt any lumps over a low heat.
  5. Pour the caramel into the hot milk and stir.
  6. Whisk the yolks in a bowl. Whisking constantly, pour in about a third of the hot caramel mixture in a thin stream, then tip everything back into the pan.
  7. Stir over a low heat with a wooden spoon until the custard thickens and reaches 82–84 °C. Don’t let it boil.
  8. Strain into a bowl set in iced water, stir in the salt and let it cool, stirring now and then.
  9. Press cling film directly onto the surface and age in the fridge for at least 4 hours, ideally overnight.

Method — Compressor ice cream maker

  1. Switch on the ice cream maker 5–10 minutes ahead so the bowl can pre-chill.
  2. Pour in the chilled mix no higher than the fill line (with a smaller bowl, churn in two batches) and churn for 35–45 minutes, until it has the consistency of thick whipped cream.
  3. Transfer to a chilled container, press cling film onto the surface and leave to harden in the freezer for 2 hours.

Total time: 7 h 55 min

Method — Freezer-bowl ice cream maker

  1. Take the frozen bowl out of the freezer just before use, fit the paddle and switch the machine on.
  2. With the machine running, pour in the chilled mix — no more than two-thirds full; freeze the rest as a second batch.
  3. Churn for 20–30 minutes, until the ice cream thickens. There’s no point going longer — by then the bowl has warmed up.
  4. Transfer to a chilled container and leave to harden in the freezer for 3 hours.

Freeze the bowl for at least 24 hours beforehand (until you can no longer hear the coolant sloshing inside). The mix must be thoroughly chilled.

Total time: 8 h 40 min

Method — Ninja CREAMi and similar machines

  1. Divide the chilled mix between CREAMi tubs, filling each no higher than the MAX line (a full batch makes about two standard tubs).
  2. Put the lids on and freeze on a level surface for 24 hours.
  3. Place a tub in the machine and run the Ice Cream program.
  4. If the ice cream is crumbly or powdery, run Re-spin (many users add 1–2 tablespoons of milk first).

Programme: Ice Cream

A standard tub holds about 470 ml, a Deluxe tub about 700 ml. Don’t fill above the MAX line, and freeze it level — the machine doesn’t handle an uneven block well.

Total time: 29 h 20 min

Method — No-machine method

  1. Pour the chilled mix into a deep metal or glass container (a baking dish, for example) and put it in the freezer.
  2. After 45 minutes, stir the mix thoroughly with a whisk, spatula or stick blender, working the frozen edges into the centre.
  3. Repeat every 30 minutes, 4–5 times in all, until the ice cream is thick and smooth.
  4. Leave to harden for another hour.

Without a machine you get more ice crystals and less air, so the ice cream is denser. Every stir breaks up the crystals, so don’t skip any.

Total time: 9 h 15 min

Stages

Preparation
20 min
Cooking
25 min
Cooling
30 min
Ageing in the fridge
4 h
Churning
40 min
Hardening in the freezer
2 h
Total time
7 h 55 min

Serving and storage

Serve with a few flakes of sea salt on top, with apple pie or with baked pears.

In a sealed container with cling film pressed onto the surface it’s best within a week; after that, ice crystals start to build up. Never refreeze ice cream that has melted.

Tips

  • Watch the caramel constantly — there are only seconds between amber and burnt. Burnt caramel is bitter and nothing will save the ice cream.
  • The cream must be hot. Cold cream would seize the caramel into a hard lump.
  • Add the salt gradually and taste — the chilled mix tastes less salty than the warm one, and freezing dulls the flavour further.
  • Keep a bowl of cold water to hand when working with caramel, in case of burns.

Why it works

During caramelisation some of the sucrose breaks down into glucose and fructose, and some turns into bitter and aromatic compounds. The result is less sweet, but the anti-freezing power (PAC) rises slightly — so the ice cream is a little softer than the calculation suggests (it counts caramel as ordinary sugar). Salt also lowers the freezing point.

Sources