My grandmother nurtured my obsession with ice cream. When she was a young lass, they didn’t have a lot of money, but she was still allowed one bowl of ice cream every night before bed. I was not so fortunate in my consumption of cold creams. Naturally, every time we to visit grandma, there was ice cream involved. The link continued to my mom. In college, my sweet mother scored a part-time position working at United Dairy Farmers (UDF) and worked out her arms scooping the ice cream.
Now, with my blood rich in cream, I am carrying on the connection by making my own ice cream. Even when I diet, I cannot think ill of the cold cream straight from the Heavens. It’s hard to mess up ice cream. I really enjoy all the flavors. I have my favorites, like most people, but new flavors are always intriguing.
The caramel swirl was requested by a colleague who doesn’t eat chocolate, isn’t a huge sugar fan, and specifically asked for the caramel to be a separate component, mixed in to the vanilla ice cream.
It’s important to remember how simple this dish is to make. As with any ice cream made with an ice cream maker, the basic steps include: 1. heat cream, (temper eggs-technically only for custards), then combine; 2. thoroughly cool the cream, add any flavorings; then 3. add to an ice cream maker for ~20 minutes to incorporate air. Beyond that, the variations, toppings, and mix-ins are up to you. There is little deviation from these main steps for any such ice cream made with the machine.
You can purchase cheap caramel, if the adventure is not something you are interested in experiencing. If you make the caramel and have a thermometer, the temperature should be around 340F, but no more than 350F, according to a caramel recipe by FifteenSpatulas. The recipe makes way more caramel then you should put in this amount of ice cream. However, it is difficult to cut the caramel recipe too much because we want enough for the caramel to fit the pot and caramelize. You could cut it in half and be fine – use a smaller pot.
Take-Home Tips: Three options if you are worried the ice cream will be too sweet: 1. use white sugar instead of brown sugar in the cream, 2. reduce the amount of sugar by going down to a quarter cup or only adding a tablespoon of caramel, and 3. all of the above. Adding more salt or specifically adding salt to the caramel might help, but it also might just make it too salty. You can already taste the salt in this recipe. Substitute the maple vanilla cream for any base (why not chocolate?) for a totally different creation.
If you are separating your egg whites from your yolks, what are your plans for the whites? When you only have 1 egg, it isn’t so terrible to toss it, but when you have 5,8, 10 eggs worth of whites, there are so many recipes crying for them. [Optional] Sauté the egg whites in a skillet with 1 Tbsp. oil and ¼ cup frozen chopped spinach, and garlic salt if desired, on low heat until sizzling. Flip or turn until fully cooked, just browned.
Scoring: 9 of 10. It is my favorite ice cream I have made so far (in my life). The texture is rich, but not too rich. It is sweet, thick, the caramel isn’t stringy, but maintains its shape. The combination melts smoothly in the mouth. The only recommendation I received from my colleagues is that it could have been less sweet. The lady who requested the flavor gave the ice cream a 8 of 10 and the caramel a 10 of 10, because of the sweetness.
Food of the Month 