Salted caramel freaking rocks. I know, I know, it’s become so super trendy that it appears on everything from bronze-crusted pork belly to towering ice cream sundaes, but it’s so damn good I unashamedly hang on to its billowing coat tails as it sweeps through every menu around town. Deeply flavoured sweet caramel given an edge by a shard of ice-white crunchy sea salt – whoever came up with that idea deserves a hearty pat on the back. Once you get a taste for for the salty-sweet see-saw, you can take the most familiar of flavours and spin them on their head. A few crystals of salt on top of a rich dark chocolate mousse, salted peanut butter cookies, guiltily delicious chocolate-covered pretzels and the breakfast of champions, a fluffy stack of bacon-layered pancakes drenched in a waterfall of smoky maple syrup; these all tickle the sweet and savoury tastebuds in the best of ways.
This ice cream was part of a dreamy dessert for my sister’s birthday – silky smooth salted caramel ice cream, flourless chocolate brownie (courtesy of Nigella) and a gloriously decadent melting Mars Bar sauce. No judgment please. It was banging.
Salted Caramel Ice Cream
From Hawksmoor at Home
Ingredients
For the ice cream base
- 600ml milk
- 275ml double cream
- 8 egg yolks
- 150g caster sugar
For the caramel
- 140g caster sugar
- 50g liquid glucose
- 15g butter
- 290g double cream
- 6g Maldon sea salt
To make the ice cream, you need to have a couple of bowls that fit into each other. Fill the larger bowl with ice and some water and place the other bowl on top. Have a fine sieve ready to strain the custard.
In a medium-sized saucepan bring the milk and cream to simmering point. In a separate bowl lightly whisk the egg yolks and sugar to break up the yolks.
Pour a little of the hot milk/cream over the egg yolks and whisk before slowly adding the remainder, whisking continuously.
Return the custard to the pan and whisk again over a low heat until the mixture starts to thicken – just below simmering point, taking care not to let it boil. You are looking to make a thin custard (if it’s too thick it will split in the ice cream machine).
Pour the custard through the sieve into the chilled bowl and allow to cool. Place cling film over the custard and place in the fridge for a couple of hours.
Next make the caramel. In a large deep saucepan, place the sugar, glucose syrup and 25ml of water. Heat, without stirring, until dark brown (but not burnt – 180°C). Remove from the heat, add the butter and stir until incorporated, then quickly whisk in the cream (be careful, you are adding a cold liquid to a very hot caramel, so there will be lots of steam.) In my ice cream, the caramel solidified when the cream hit it, but with a bit of stirring back on the heat, it all came smoothly back together.
Return the pan to the heat and once it comes to the boil carry on stirring and boil for 10 minutes. Turn off the heat and stir the caramel into the ice cream base, along with the salt, and let it cool.
When cool, place in the fridge for 2 hours. Sieve into a large jug and churn in an ice cream machine (according to the manufacturer’s instructions) and then place in a container in the freezer to fully set. OMG.