Dulce de Leche Ice Cream

A few weeks ago, when we had that incredible rain, it gave me an opportunity to finally do a large shopping.  I  used my Ultimatest Grocery List and started going through my food pantry to see what I did and didn’t have.    Well that turned out into a 2 hour session of going through EVERYTHING and checking the sale by date and throwing out, unfortunately, a lot of expired food items.  (I have been trying to reform my shopping to what I need rather than what I would like to make in the future.  I’ve been better but I still need to fine tune.)  Anyway, during my purge, I came up with 2 cans and a jar of Dulce De Leche, expiring in the next couple of months.  Why so much?  Who knows! But I decided right then and there to use them up!  This ice cream is one of the results of my search and it is quite yummy.

Ice cream is such a great dessert to make.  I find the homemade product far superior than what I can buy from Haagen Daz or Ben and Jerry’s.  Most of the time, I  make my ice cream with a base of milk and cream, which is lighter in texture and flavor than the custard based ice cream.  The custard based ice cream includes eggs, which you have to cook and then cool, a little more work but delicious as well.

If you haven’t invested in an ice cream maker, I highly recommend you do.    This is what I have: Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker.  It’s not much money and it produces great results.  The only disadvantage is that you have to wait 24 hours before you can make another ice cream so that the bowl completely freezes.  And you need dedicated room in your freezer for the bowl.

This is what my daughter has: Lello Gelato Junior.  More money, yes,  but it has a built-in compressor freezer so you can make ice cream when ever you want!

Dulce de Leche Ice Cream by Gourmet 2007

Below are pictures to help you along.  I did not add the pecans but I am sure they would be delicious!

milk and cream just to a boil:

I used Nestle brand Dulce de Leche:

measuring the caramel, one can was not enough:

Remove milk/cream from heat, add caramel and whisk until thoroughly combined.  I actually had to put mine back on the heat for a little bit to make sure the caramel had completely dissolved:

then add vanilla:

pour into another bowl, you can certainly do the ice bath but I put mine in the freezer for about an hour or so until it was cold:

after 30 minutes in the ice cream machine:

into the container and then the freezer for a few hours or overnight (it’s still soft after an hour, I think anyway):

yum!

I served this with a very chocolatey brownie and though alone the ice cream is yum, together with the brownie it was really scrumptious!  I will share this brownie recipe the next post.  Though I have a really great brownie already, this is a one bowl recipe that’s super easy!