Caramel Ice Cream

A two-line variation that assumes you already have the book's vanilla ice-cream base and its caramel recipe in front of you. The whole dish hinges on how far you cook the sugar.

• What "caramel" means hereNot a chewy candy but a dark sugar syrup: one cup sugar with one-half cup water boiled until it colours. Judge it by eye and take it to a deep amber; stopped too pale the flavour is merely sweet, and taken too far it turns acrid.
• Add it hot, to a warm baseStir the caramel syrup into the custard while both are still warm, so it blends in evenly; poured into a cold base it stiffens and streaks and is harder to work in.
• The vanilla cream it refers toThe cross-reference is to the book's own vanilla ice cream, which may be either a plain sweetened cream or a cooked egg custard; check what your base recipe calls for. If it contains egg, cook the custard to 170-175F so the eggs are safe and the base thickens.
• Reduce the sugar in the baseThe caramel brings a full cup of sugar of its own. Cut the sugar in the vanilla recipe by roughly a third, or the finished cream will be cloying and slow to set firm.
• Vanilla is optional nowKeep about half the vanilla; caramel and a full measure of extract compete. A pinch of salt sharpens the caramel considerably.
• FreezingThe original assumes a hand-cranked bucket packed with cracked ice and coarse salt, roughly three parts ice to one of salt. A modern machine works directly; chill the base thoroughly first, since caramel-heavy custards churn slowly.
• YieldYield depends entirely on the vanilla cream recipe you are working from, which this page does not restate. The caramel syrup adds volume, so allow headroom in the canister.