Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Dulce de Leche and Toffee Crunch Ice Cream

Dearest hubs won the ice cream smackdown this week, and that man loves his sweets and loves his chunky ice cream. He initially chose Rocky Road, which made my heart sink. For a girl who likes her ice cream chunk-less, Rocky Road is the wicked stepmother of ice creams.

Fortunately, he eventually settled on Heath Bar Crunch ice cream. Which is still chunky but hey, at least it's only one kind of chunk to deal with.

I perused some recipes and then remembered my friend Tamar, who grew up in Colombia, years ago told me how to make homemade caramel, or as they call it, dulce de leche. Wouldn't toffee bits taste even better in a caramel-flavored ice cream?

I was afraid it would be too sweet for me, but the girls thought caramel ice-cream was a hot-dang good idea, so we decided to go for it. I'm starting to wonder if we'll make a single by-the-recipe ice cream this summer. Maybe we T's are just Ice Cream Renegades.

Homemade dulce de leche is simple. Take the paper off a can of sweetened condensed milk, plop the can into a pot of boiling water, lower the heat and just simmer it for 3 hours. Then let the can cool, open it up, and viola! Caramel.

The hardest part of the recipe was getting the girls to wait 3-plus hours for the stuff to cook and cool. They nagged me so bad that I threatened them with baths at 10:30 in the morning. They were smart enough to decide to ride scooters outside.

Dulce de Leche and Toffee Crunch Ice cream
makes 1 quart

1 can sweetened condensed milk, prepared as above
2 cups heavy cream
2 cups 2% milk
3 large egg yolks
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 cup chocolate covered toffee candy, such as Heath, Skor, etc.

Scald the milk (bring it slowly just to the boiling point) in a saucepan over medium heat. In a separate bowl, whisk the sugar and eggs together until thickened. Add the condensed milk mixture. Slowly add the hot milk in, a few tablespoons at a time, stirring well.

Return the mixture to the saucepan. Heat it gently--do NOT boil--over medium-low heat until the custard thickens. It should be done when it coats the back of a spoon.

Cool mixture completely.

Add to ice cream maker and churn for 20 minutes. Add the toffee bits and churn 5 minutes more. Transfer to a freezer safe container and freeze 2 hours or until set.


I meant to take pictures of it, but it was served at the end of a long and successful Father's Day barbecue and before I could think to take a snap, the whole shebang was gone. Guess it didn't suck, eh?

4 comments:

  1. LOL OMG your killing me here I am not suppose to do ice cream with my diabetes. Sounds awesome!

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  2. Oh man this sounds terrific! I am nuts about dulce de leche but we never make it. I need to fix that!

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  3. I loooooove dulce de leche ice cream! And I'm flattered to be mentioned in your blog :)

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