I came across this recipe on David Lebovitz’s website, his blog is amazing & I have been lurking there for ages. Cooking something for the first time following a recipe can be nerve wracking but kudos to David for a really easy to follow recipe with pictures.

I made this ice cream by hand, because that was the only option I had, I don’t have an ice cream machine at home “yet”. Because I can’t seem find a non-industrial one in Nairobi, don’t know why. I would love to get a pacojet, I fell in love with the pacojet when I saw one in action in Sydney last year.

The recipe for the salted butter caramel ice cream is adapted from here, also available is tips on how to make ice cream without ice maker.

• 500 mls whole milk, divided in two. One part left chilled in a bowl in the fridge.
• 300 grams sugar
• 60 grams salted butter
• ½ teaspoon sea salt
• 250 ml heavy cream
• 5 large egg yolks
• ¾ teaspoon vanilla extract

First thing up was gathering up all my ingredients, all the dairy was from Brookside. They make some really great butter & cream. I used some fine sea salt. I was a bit worried about the salt I used, in the recipe there is an explicit caveat placed on the salt to use. I didn’t have maldon or fleur de sel, but some stock standard looking sea salt, fine off-white sea salt.

Everything in place, it was time to caramelise the sugar. Dumped all the sugar into a saucepan over medium heat, it took a while to get the sugar melting. Once the sugar started melted everything moved quickly. The recipe stated that the caramel is to be cooked until it started smoking, I had never taken a caramel to this point, so I cooked the caramel until I saw what I thought was smoke. It looked like light water vapour.

With caramelisation done, I took the saucepan off the heat then stirred in the butter & salt, then the cream. Some caramel seized, but this was no cause for panic unlike when I did the Pineapple Chop, then I didn’t know I could melt away the seized caramel over low heat, which I did this time. After working away the seized caramel, I stirred in 250mls of the milk.

Moved on to whisk the 5 yolks in a bowl, poured in some of the caramel while still whisking. Poured the egg yolks back into the caramel, stirring constantly. Cooked over low heat until the custard thickens, to be on the safe side I used a thermometer & stopped cooking once custard was at 77 degrees celsius. With custards don’t go over 82 degrees celsius unless you want an eggy tasting custard.

Once custard was done, strained it into the bowl with the other 250 mls of chilled milk. Kept stirring until custard had cooled down. Covered the bowl with cling film loosely, making sure the cling film touched the top of the custard, this prevents a skin from forming. chilled it overnight in the fridge.

To make the ice cream, poured the chilled custard on to a large shallow dish. Placed it in the freezer. Then at 40 minute intervals, took out the dish and gave the custard a good stir to break up large ice particles. After the third stir poured almost frozen custard into a one litre container, covered & placed it in the freezer overnight.

This is the result, beautiful caramel flavoured ice cream. That I had for breakfast, lunch & dinner.

Making ice cream at home without a machine is not impossible, it may take a while long but it is worth it.

This was my first crack at cooking from the Alinea cookbook. Flipping through this massive book with beautiful food porn(photographs), I am filled with a sense of awe. This is not every day cooking, Grant Achatz & his team are really pushing cooking as we know further. by the way he writes a great column here.  

Back to me flipping the book, I was searching for easy recipes to start with, most recipes in the book require a massive mise en place(ingredients).

The liquefied Caramel popcorn was just popcorn, sugar, salt, butter, water & soy lecithin(which I didn’t have). It is so easy to make, the only part where i tripped up was the caramel froth that was supposed to go on top of the liquefied popcorn. According to the recipe, I was supposed to make caramel from sugar, water & simple syrup, which I did. After that was adding soy lecithin & blending the caramel with an immersion blender to aerate it and create a wonderful froth. Well I failed, I had no soy lecithin(which helps stablise foams) & used a regular blender which resulted in no froth.

Anyhoo, my first sip of the liquefied popcorn had me doing cartwheels in the kitchen, this really popped in my mouth. It is sweet, salty, buttery & popcorny at the same time…. Oh my! It rocked. I know you are reading this & can’t share in my excitement or think i’m insane.

So how is it done, since I followed Grant’s recipe in the book verbatim, I can’t reproduce it here. But i’ll run down what I did.

• Make caramel with sugar & water.
• Pop some corn.
• Combine popcorn, butter, sugar, salt & water in a sauce pan, simmer.
• Strain the popcorn mixture then blend it smooth. Set aside.
• Then I tried to froth the caramel, Ideally I should have added soy lecithin & blended with immersion blender.
• To serve, pour warm liquid popcorn into a glass, then add caramel froth on top.

That is it, back to scouring the alinea book for more stuff to try…..

]]> http://arapleting.com/porkygourmand/2009/04/caramel-popcorn-liquefied/feed/ 0