Dulce De Leche Ice Cream

I love dulce de leche. It's creamy and rich and smooth and silky. I've tried making it at home various ways but I've found that Pennisi's at Woollongabba can be relied on to stock it in jars. I have trouble with my homemade dulce de leche, sometimes it's not as smooth as it should be. The jarred stuff stays nicely smooth and is often softer and easier to scoop than my homemade attempts.

While I do love dulce de leche I am not really sure what I can do with it. I mean, I do enjoy dipping apple slices into it and I know that you can sandwich it in between two cookies but I really wanted to do more with it. Then I found this dulce de leche ice cream posted on What A Dish!.

I'm a huge fan of egg-based ice creams. The ice-creams made of frozen cream or sweetened condensed milk do not work for me at all. I've never had a problem with them (touch wood). I always temper my egg yolks with a little bit of the heated milk before adding the rest, I always let the custard rest in the fridge overnight and it turns out the most amazingly creamy and rich ice cream.

This recipe was nice and easy. Heat your milk and dulce de leche in a saucepan until just below boiling point while beating your egg yolks and sugar until light in colour. Add the hot milk to the eggs and then return to heat and cook until it coats the back of a spoon. The recipe states to cook until it reaches 71 degrees C (160 degrees F), but I was too lazy to find my candy thermometer. I will say that my eggs were extremely fresh and I knew my icecream would not be fed to any pregnant women so I was happy to take my chances if the temperature guide was for food safety issues.

After the mix coats the back of a spoon, pour it through a sieve into a bowl and stir in some cream. Cover with plastic wrap so that the wrap is touching the whole surface of the custard and let it chill overnight. The next day, pour it into an ice cream maker and then freeze until set. Simple.

I didn't read the full recipe until I sat down to write this post and I see now I was supposed to layer the icecream with more dulce de leche. I don't think it needed it, to be honest. The ice cream was incredibly rich, perfect in small doses. It had a strong dulce de leche flavour, it was just lovely.

See What A Dish! for the recipe.