Salted Caramel Ice Cream
Salted caramel comes from Brittany, where butter has always been salted, and ice cream shows it off best: deep, almost bitter caramel, cream and a pinch of salt that makes every flavour fuller. The key moment is taking the sugar to a coppery colour — pale caramel is merely sweet, dark caramel gives that grown-up taste. All the sugar goes into the caramel, so the ice cream stays soft even straight from the freezer.
- Prep
- 30 min
- Cook
- 20 min
- Rest
- 8 h 25 min
- Total
- 9 h 15 min
- Servings
- 8
- Level
- Challenging
- Per serving
- 355 kcal
Ingredients
Makes: about 1 litre, 8 servings
Shopping list
The ingredients for the servings you chose — copy them or send them to a messenger. Tick what you already have at home: only the rest goes on the list.
Method
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Step 1: Get ready
Heat 250 ml of the cream until hot. Pour the remaining 200 ml cold cream into a large bowl, set a sieve over it, and have a larger bowl of iced water nearby. Caramel doesn’t wait, so have everything within reach.
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Step 2: Make the caramel
Spread the sugar evenly in a wide, heavy-based pan over medium heat. Don’t stir until the edges begin to melt, then stir gently with a heatproof spatula. Cook for 8–10 minutes, until all the sugar has melted and turned a deep copper, like strong tea, with the first wisp of smoke.
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Step 3: Add the cream
Take off the heat and pour in the hot cream in three additions, stirring: it will bubble up furiously and the steam is very hot. If hard lumps of caramel form, return to low heat and stir until they dissolve. Stir in the butter and salt.
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Step 4: Add the milk
Pour in the milk and heat over medium heat, stirring, until hot but not boiling.
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Step 5: Temper the yolks
Lightly beat the yolks in a bowl. Pour in half the hot caramel mixture in a thin stream, whisking constantly, then pour everything back into the pan.
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Step 6: Cook the custard to 82 °C
Cook over low heat, stirring constantly and scraping the bottom, for 5–7 minutes, to 82–84 °C: the custard coats the spatula and a line drawn with a finger stays clear.
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Step 7: Chill
Strain the custard into the cold cream, add the vanilla and stir. Set the bowl in iced water for 15 minutes, press cling film onto the surface and chill for at least 4 hours.
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Step 8: Freeze
Churn in an ice-cream maker for 20–30 minutes, transfer to a container, cover the surface with cling film and freeze for 4 hours. This ice cream is always a little softer than most — that’s the caramelised sugar at work.
Tips & variations
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Tip
No machine? Pour the cold base into a metal container 4–5 cm deep and freeze. After 45 minutes, beat it hard with a fork or hand mixer, scraping in the frozen edges, and repeat every 30 minutes 4–5 times, then leave for 3–4 hours. The texture is slightly denser but still smooth.
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Tip
Caramel reaches around 180 °C and sticks to skin. Wear long sleeves, add the cream gradually and keep children away from the stove.
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Variation
For caramel ripples, make a second batch of caramel with 100 g sugar and 80 ml cream, cool it and layer it with the ice cream in the container.
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Storage
Keep in an airtight container with cling film on the surface for up to 2 weeks.
Nutrition
| 1 serving | Whole dish 8 servings | |
|---|---|---|
| Energy | 355 kcal | 2,840 kcal |
| Protein | 4 g | 32 g |
| Fat | 26 g | 208 g |
| Carbohydrates | 26 g | 208 g |
Approximate values calculated from standard ingredient data.
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