Ava

I recently made some cinnamon ice cream and mixed in toasted marshmallows and hard, broken up caramel (made with just sugar). After a few weeks it appears most of the caramel pieces have 'disappeared' and there is now a liquid layer at the bottom of the tub which, on tasting, seems to be caramel with some ice cream mixed in. I don't understand how this has happened - I tried it after seeing how David Lebovitz's caramel ice cream recipe has hard pieces of caramel in it, so obviously it should actually work. Why has mine... melted? In the freezer, too? Very much hoping the answer isn't that there's a problem with the freezer...

I haven't gotten around to trying it out in mashed potatoes yet, but will update when I do Good news is, I managed to use it to make David Lebovitz's malted milk ice cream. I used the conversion here: http://homebrew.stackexchange.com/questions/1348/what-is-the-conversion-rate-between-dry-malt-extract-dme-and-liquid-malt-extra It seemed to work well Had a nice malty flavour. Admittedly I did use muscovado sugar rather than white (I always do) so I don't think the flavour came through as well as it otherwise could have. Hopefully though, I can use the same conversion and use it for other recipes too.

Thank you for the replies. I think I'll try it again in a milkshake (but a lot more) and an ice cream recipe I've been meaning to try, and other than that will probably save it for baking. It might be nice in my rye bread recipe I can't stand beer, unfortunately, so can't use it for that. Good idea though. Oh, and adding it to mashed potatoes definitely sounds interesting, I'll give that a go!

I really love the taste of malt and recently finally got some malt extract - Rayners, it's liquid/syrup rather than powdered - but to my great disappointment it doesn't seem to work well for me. I've tried using it in a milkshake and hot chocolate, and both times it barely added any sweetness or malty flavour even after adding more and more. So firstly: did I get the wrong thing? All the recipes I see for milkshakes, for example, actually use a powder. Other than needing more I don't see why there should be a difference. Secondly, if it isn't going to work for my purposes (milkshakes, ice-cream, etc) what can I use it for instead? P.S. This forum seemed like the best fit for my topic, but sorry if it's the wrong one.