Salted Butter Caramel Ice Cream

Ever since I purchased my second-hand Cuisinart Ice Cream machine for $10 the other week, I have been perusing various ice cream recipes looking for one to hit the spot. Those that keep coming back to me are David Lebovitz's...probably because he wrote an entire book devoted just to ice cream, The Perfect Scoop, and probably because he has the best ice cream recipes around.

So, I had made a bunch of salted butter caramel macarons (post to come soon), and I had so much caramel and so many egg yolks left over I thought I would make an attempt at the salted butter caramel ice cream from the book. Keep in mind, until now the only place I had ever eaten this flavor of ice cream was in Paris, at the famed Berthillon. And boooooooy is it good. Sinful. Decadent. Impossibly good.

So, off I went to my mini ice cream maker and my ingredients, and I actually created salted butter caramel ice cream from scratch. Not only that, but it was EASY. Bien sûr, it may not have been as good as Berthillon's (I think I went too heavy on the salt in my hard caramel), but it was delish nevertheless. I served it with homemade deep dish apple pie (post to come soon) and folks swooned. The mixture of sweet and salty is just perfect. My two year old licked his bowl clean. But two year olds do that, so maybe it wasn't the compliment that I took it as. I'll take what I can get.

My advice: 1) Don't eat this ice cream immediately. The pieces of crunchy caramel have to soften up before you dig in, otherwise you'll be digging them out of your teeth all night. Wait overnight and watch how they soften and ooze. It's yuuuummmy.

2) Be patient while making your caramel. Don't stir too much. Just relax.

3) Use good course sea salt (sel de mer). Not table salt. Trader Joe's sells course sea salt for rock bottom prices.