Salted Caramel Skor Ice Cream
Making homemade caramel takes a little practice, but it's worth it for the rich caramel flavor of this ice cream. The caramel swirl is optional, but worth it even if you buy caramel sauce.
Servings 8 pints plus a little more
Cost 5
Ingredients
Caramel for Base
- 1 ¼ cups heavy cream (280 grams)
- 1 cup pure can sugar (200 grams)
Custard Base
- 1 cup heavy cream (220 grams)
- 1 cup whole milk (240 grams)
- ¼ cup sugar (50 grams)
- 3 large whole eggs
- ¼ teaspoon salt, kosher (Morton)
- ½ teaspoon vanilla
- 1 tablespoon vodka
- 2 regular Skor Bars or any other toffee
- ⅓ cup salted cashews, almonds or mixed nuts
- ⅓ cup homemade or store bought caramel sauce
Instructions
Caramel For Base
- Gently warm 1 ¼ cup of cream in a saucepan. Turn off heat and keep nearby.
- In a heavy 10-inch saute pan, heat 1 cup of the pure cane sugar, spreading it evenly over the dry skillet, until it starts to melt. It will look like it's drying out at first. As it warms and changes, stir it a little to break it up, but don't scrape the sides of the pan. Control heat to keep it from burning. If you need to speed things up, put the lid on the pan for a minute. Once you see that sugar melting you're good. If it refused to melt at all (could be brand of sugar or beet sugar issue), start over and use 2 tablespoons of water with the sugar.
- Once the sugar has melted, stop and allow it to start turning amber, watching carefully, and tilting the pan, raising from the heat as necessary, so that the sugar doesn't burn. Do not scrape the sides of the pan. Just continue tilting the pan and lifting up off the burner if you need to until amber and all of the sugar has melted.
- Once the sugar is a deep amber, remove from heat briefly, stand back and add the 1 ¼ cup of warmed cream. It's going to bubble up. The sugar will seize and clump and the cream will boil. Return pan to a low heat and push any sugar clumps under the cream so they'll get hot and melt faster. Use the lid if you need to build wet heat. Stir low and slow until hard sugar lumps dissolve. Set aside to cool while you make the custard.
Custard Base
- In the same saucepan you used to warm the cream, combine another 1 cup of cream, 1 cup of milk and ¼ cup sugar. Begin heating until it reaches a simmer.
- Meanwhile, whisk the eggs together in a medium size bowl. Have ready a second bowl with a sieve set over it to strain your custard. You could use the same bowl you used for the eggs, but then you're risking food safety because the bowl had raw eggs in it. So be safe and use a second bowl for the custard.
- Gradually whisk the hot cream mixture into the eggs, then pour it all back into the saucepan. Whisk over low to medium low heat for about 3-4 minutes or until mixture is about 175 degrees F. Remove from heat and pour through the sieve into the clean bowl.
- Pour the (still warm) caramel into the warm custard and stir in the salt and vanilla. Let cool somewhat at room temperature (about 30 minutes), then cover bowl loosely and transfer to the refrigerator to chill for several hours or until very cold. An overnight chill is optimal, but as long as the custard is cold you should be able to churn it.
- Before you churn, whisk 1 tablespoon of vodka into the custard. This will help keep it soft.
- Pour into your ice cream maker and churn as the manufacturer directs.
- As you pack the ice cream into containers, drizzle in your favorite caramel sauce, salted mixed nuts and a chopped up Skor bars.
Notes
Sugars that don't say "cane" on the label may be made with beets and beet sugar doesn't always caramelize right. Be sure to use a brand that says it's pure can sugar.