Caramel Ice Cream

This caramel ice cream recipe is from Chef Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc at Home cookbook. I love making ice cream with my Kitchen Aid mixer ice cream attachment but I’ve always put off trying the ice cream recipes from this cookbook because of the sheer number of egg yolks. I have a go-to ice cream recipe which uses 5 egg yolks, but this one uses 10! I do love this cookbook and nothing that I’ve tried from this cookbook has ever disappointed. Besides, our backyard girls have started laying eggs again after the long cold winter so there is an abundance of eggs at the moment and I feel like indulging.

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The steps in this caramel ice cream recipe were pretty standard. There were no surprises with the caramel or the custard. The one thing that was a little unexpected was that the batter (after chilling in the fridge for 12 hours) did not turn into a soft serve texture after being in the ice cream maker for what felt like forever.

I don’t use a timer when making ice cream because I’m used to just visually checking on it every so often. When I see it expand over the paddle and it looks like soft serve I stop it and put it in a container to freeze. This whole process usually takes about 15 minutes. With this recipe, it did expand, but it was still a thick sauce-like texture. I ran the ice cream maker for much longer than usual (it was a pretty cool day so heat wasn’t the problem) and I could see the bowl starting to sweat so I knew that leaving it in there any longer wasn’t going to improve the situation. I poured it into a container in its soupy state and hoped for the best.

The next morning I nervously opened the container (will 10 egg yolks go to waste?!!)…and the result was delightful. It froze into a nice fluffy but rich texture, and the flavor…wow. Once again, Thomas Keller did not disappoint. This is a very rich ice cream and every bite is heavenly!