No-Churn Salted Caramel Biscoff Ice-cream

I seem to have many macaron classes these days so I am generating too many egg yolks, more than I can comfortably incorporate in cooking for the family. So I decided to make some ice-cream 😊. Salted caramel biscoff flavoured! 

My younger kid's favourite flavour! 

I found out by accident some time back that the frozen diplomat cream I make for choux pastry fillings make excellent ice-creams when frozen. I did some research recently and found that one of the versions of no-churn old fashioned ice-cream is precisely frozen diplomat cream! 

Why use egg yolks in ice-cream making? Because egg yolks are natural emulsifiers! Many cheap commercial ice-creams sold in tubs contain artificial emulsifiers to keep the ice-cream creamy and scoopable. Many no-churn ice-cream recipes are condensed milk based. While the condensed milk version is simple as it contains few ingredients, you can't control the amount of sugar in your ice-cream and it does tend to be rather sweet. You can have total control over how much sugar goes into cooked custard based ice-creams, like this one that I am sharing. 

I make my own salted caramel and usually keep some in the freezer, so making this ice-cream wasn't too troublesome. If you don't have salted caramel on hand, you may refer to this recipe to make some before you make the ice-cream. I make and store my salted caramel in quite a firm state. For incorporating it into ice-cream, you have to thin it a little with milk or the salted caramel bits will be really hard when frozen. Prepare some salted caramel with consistency thin enough to flow off a spoon easily. You may choose to fold the caramel into the ice-cream or drizzle over each scoop. The great thing about homemade ice-cream is there's so many things you can adjust according to taste 😊 so feel free to adjust the ingredient quantity based on your preference. 

Salted caramel that is thinned with milk and some biscoff biscuits in the process of being crushed. I do the old fashioned way of using a pestle to grind the biscuits. 

Ingredients :

4 or 5 egg yolks
20g cornflour 
50g brown sugar (use white sugar for other flavours that don't go well with brown sugar. This level of sugar is already quite low but you may increase or reduce according to taste. ) 
2 tsp vanilla extract /beanpaste
1/8 tsp salt
240g fresh milk
240g heavy cream
2 gelatin sheets, bloomed in ice water
1/4 cup homemade salted caramel, thinned with milk
100g biscoff biscuits, coarsely crushed

Steps:

1. Heat heavy cream in saucepan until steaming (not boiling or bubbling), about 70°C. Remove from heat. Combine bloomed gelatin sheets (squeeze out excess water) and hot cream in a bowl. Whisk until gelatin is melted. Press a cling wrap on the surface and refrigerate for a few hours or overnight. 

2. Heat milk and vanilla in saucepan until steaming (not boiling). In the meantime, whisk egg yolks, brown sugar, cornflour and salt together in a glass measuring jug or heavy mixing bowl. 

3. When milk is hot enough, remove from heat and pour in a thin stream into the egg yolk mixture, whisking the egg yolk mixture continuously. Pour everything back into saucepan. 

4. Cook the custard over medium low heat while whisking continuously. Once the mixture starts to thicken, remove from heat and continue to whisk until mixture is smooth again. Return the saucepan back to heat and keep whisking and cooking until thickened, about 2 minutes more. Be careful not to use too high heat or you get scrambled eggs. 

5. Sieve custard into a bowl and press cling wrap on the surface. Refrigerate until firm, at least 1h or overnight. 

6. Take out set heavy cream from fridge. Consistency is like panna cotta. 

Use an electric mixer to beat until stiff peaks. 

7. Take out set custard/pastry cream from fridge and whip briefly with a spatula to loosen it up 

8. Fold whipped cream into custard in a few additions.

9. Fold in crushed biscoff biscuits. 

10. Fold in salted caramel (optional if you are serving ice-cream with salted caramel drizzled over) . 

11. Spread the mixture in a thin layer in a container or lined baking tray. As thin a layer as possible as it helps the diplomat cream to freeze quickly. Ice-cream that is quickly frozen is easier to scoop too because any ice crystals that form will not have chance to grow too big. Freeze for 1.5-2h for a softer-serve, overnight for a firmer ice-cream. 

You may serve the ice-cream with more crushed biscoff biscuits and/or salted caramel! 

Enjoy! 

With love, 

Phay Shing