Lebovitz's Sea Salted Caramel Ice Cream Recipe (help!)

[The Choc Doc]

Hi all,

Finally got around to posting on here and not the way I'd like to - with a failure!

I've made ice-creams in the past, never ever had any problems with custard or egg-less styles. I'm a chocolatier and so no stranger to complexities in some forms of cooking, however I'm perplexed with this one.

I've tried to make the David Lebovitz's sea-salted caramel ice cream over on his blog. I follow it pretty much exactly to the letter and still my ice-cream fails to, well, form an ice-cream. After 20+ mins in the maker it is like a soup - nothing like soft-serve ice cream but even perhaps less viscous than a milkshake. Twice now.

I would appreciate some thoughts/help where this is going wrong! Here is step by step what I do:

1) Caramelise 300g sugar.

2) Add 60g salted butter (I use Brittany Sea salted butter with large salt crystals in it) and 3/4 tsp salt (Fleur de Sel)

3) Add 250ml cream

4)Often have to return to low heat as some hardened caramel forms - whisking until this goes

5) Add 250ml whole milk.

6) Briefly whisk 5 large egg yolks together

7) Temper eggs with caramel mixture

8) Return to low/moderate heat

9) Cook to 77degC stirring constantly - coats back of spoon but still feels a bit too thin perhaps?! But gets to 77degC which is top of the range given in recipe. Checked with 2 thermometers.

10)Pour through fine mesh onto cooled 250ml whole milk in bowl over ice.

11) Whisk to cool

12) 3degC overnight/16hr

13) Add to ice-cream maker (frozen bowl for >24h, new fridge-freezer set at -20degC).

I've used the ice-cream maker recently to make my own (non-Lebovitz) single origin coffee ice-cream and it works fine. Fairly confident it is not the machine.

My issues are:

1) Sea salt in the butter - too much salt affecting the ability to freeze?!

2) Cooking to 77 - other ice-creams I've cooked up to 84degC...it did coat the back of a spoon but should I go higher than 77? Add more eggs?

3) The recipe seems odd to me with so much milk:cream ratio (using double/48% fat cream/heavy) - I guess taking into account butter fat gets it in right range but this is bugging me.

However, I find noone commenting on blogs where this recipe is posted that their attempts have failed. This is embarassing for me as a confectioner who rarely fails! Bugging the hell out of me - would appreciate any help/suggestions why this is happening...

Many thanks,

TCD

[ElsieD]

I have made this ice cream and have never had a problem with it. The only difference is that I tend to cook the custard to a temperature closer to 185 F but I don't know if that makes a difference.

[lesliec]

I haven't tried this recipe, but my 'standard' ice cream base uses much the same quantities of dairy and eggs but ... half the sugar.

I know you can't really make caramel without it, but I also know from experience with an entirely different recipe that too much sugar means freezing doesn't happen. Worth a try?

[LindaK]

Welcome to the forums, Choc Doc.

Over in the discussion topic about David's book The Perfect Scoop, there are questions about his caramel ice cream recipe, some members had similar trouble with it, though the ratios are different (and it doesn't have any butter). Here's the ingredient list in the book:

1 c (200 g) sugar

2 c (500 g) milk

1/4 - 1/2 tsp sea salt

1 c (250 g) heavy cream

5 large egg yolks

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

looks like in the blog recipe that the butter replaces a cup of milk, and there's more sugar. Still, you might pick up some tips by reading through that discussion.

[The Choc Doc]

Thanks for the replies - I guess it is a combination of the higher sugar and potentially the extra salt in my butter (plus maybe added a bit too much as I like salt...). It hardened in the freezer with little/no crystals but still quite soft to serve, but more like soft-serve now! Think I will play around with it a bit and other recipes.

Thanks for the welcome!

TCD