Salted Caramel Ice Cream

I love ice cream! And with temperatures in the 90s every day this week, summer is officially here and cold desserts are my jam. Have you ever made homemade ice cream? It’s just slightly more difficult that buying some at the store and unfortunately takes a good bit of time, but the reward of homemade ice cream is definitely worth the extra work and time. Now, you might not keep heavy cream on hand like I do, but the rest of the ingredients are simple ones you probably already have in your kitchen.

If you’ve been around here for a while you’ve heard me talk about my love of sweet and salty desserts and this Salted Caramel Ice Cream is another one. First you start with a simple caramel base made from unsalted butter and brown sugar. Then the real magic happens when you add in the sea salt.

Let’s talk about the cream and milk in this recipe for a minute. The fat content is what makes your ice cream creamy. What I listed below is the combination of heavy cream and 1% milk that suits our tastes, but feel free to customize it to your taste. I wouldn’t recommend subbing in fat free milk because a low fat content makes for not very creamy ice cream.

Follow the directions on your ice cream maker for freezing. This ice cream is delightful by itself, but it is also great as the based for a Salted Caramel sundae. Have you ever made homemade ice cream? Leave a comment below with your favorite flavor!

Good luck eating only one scoop. 😉

Salted Caramel Ice Cream

Ingredients:

3/4 cup brown sugar
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 cup heavy cream
1 1/2 cups milk (I used 1%)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon sea salt

Directions:

Combine the sugar and the butter in a medium size saucepan, over medium heat. When the butter has melted, stir to combine and continue stirring for 4 minutes. When the sugar and butter have combined and are bubbly, smooth and thick, remove from the heat.
Very slowly, pour the cream into the hot caramel, whisking constantly. Whisk until smooth, making sure there isn’t a great deal of caramel stuck on the bottom of the pan. (A little bit of caramel stuck to the bottom edges is fine.) Add the milk, vanilla, and salt. Whisk again until smooth.
Cover and refrigerate until cold.
Pour into ice cream maker and freeze per machine’s instructions.