Occasionally the kitchen gods speak to me. Earlier this year I had a weird urge to make banana bread, and later that day, I read on Facebook that it was national banana bread day. Talk about weird! (I rarely make banana bread, so especially weird!) This time it was ice cream. It’s summer time, and finally getting hot around here. I pulled out my ice cream maker and threw the bowl in the freezer and started hunting for recipes. Low and behold! July is national ice cream month. I guess the kitchen gods want me to make ice cream!
Last year I made some delicious salted caramel ice cream. It was so amazingly good! I decided to make the recipe a little easier this time (the original had a cooked ice cream base). After a little bit of hunting and asking around, I came across this recipe, and the base couldn’t be easier! Only two ingredients! I played around with it a little, and was definitely impressed with the results! It freezer perfectly, not too hard, but holds it’s own. I can’t wait to start trying more add ins! Here it is!
14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk
2 cups whipping cream
10 oz. caramels, unwrapped
4 tbsp half and half or cream
½ tsp salt
Microwave the caramels and cream, stirring every 20 seconds, until melted smoothly. Add the salt and stir in.
Reserve about ¼ cup of caramel. In a blender, combine the cream, sweetened condensed milk, and the rest of the caramel. Blend until smooth.
Chill your ice cream base in the refrigerator for a couple hours until cold. Don’t skip this step! If your ice cream base goes in the machine too warm, it won’t freeze up all the way. Chilling it also gives the flavors time to meld together.
Pour your ice cream into your ice cream maker and churn according to your machine’s directions.
Once your ice cream is frozen, you can swirl in the remaining caramel. Store in an airtight container in the freezer. I usually lay a sheet of saran wrap directly on top of the ice cream and put a top on it to make it air tight.
And thanks to the a really awesome company, I was able to give me GF daughter some of this ice cream on a GF cone!
