Week Twenty-Eight: South America

I have taken inspiration from South America before, in With A Twist. That was Brazil; this is Argentina. Dulce de leche, or sweet of milk, is a caramelised milk that is not restricted to Argentina but is very well embraced there and treated as a national food. The first encounter I had with dulce de leche was in an Argentine restaurant. There are multiple ways to make dulce de leche, some more authentic than others; I use a cheat method that uses condensed milk. This ice cream recipe is based on my normal dulce de leche recipe, modified to get to a state where it will churn as ice cream. We’ve seen that my home formulated recipes don’t always go wonderfully, but - spoiler alert - I’m actually pretty happy with this one, and would make only one albeit large modification.

Dulce de leche ice cream

Ingredients

397g condensed milk (36.19%)
550g whole (3.7% butterfat) milk (50.14%)
150g unsalted butter (13.67%)

Method

1. Put the condensed milk in a saucepan and heat until it turns a light orange colour.

2. Add the butter in small cubes and stir until melted.

3. Add the whole milk and stir until thoroughly combined.

4. Chill for several hours, potentially overnight (but see my note about what the butter will do, you may want to not chill as long as usual); for best food safety, use an ice bath to reduce to 20C before putting in the refrigerator.

5. Rewhisk and pass through a sieve just prior to churning (again, see note.)

6. Churn according to your ice cream machine’s instructions.

7. Put into a container and freeze for at least four hours, preferably overnight.

https://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=12Vo677Q0YBEA9SLP0tj45pyxt_4oP94A

https://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1CEHnsw0yw39ejks2lsL_Sl7QG-4AoF5P

About the butter. It’s part of my normal dulce de leche recipe and I thought, that’s great, I’ll use the butter to increase the fat level. You may have noticed something about butter: when cold, it clumps together and it’s very hard. That’s precisely what it did in this mixture, so I’ve done basically a home version of homogenisation - I put it through a blender and then a sieve. There are no butter clumps in the ice cream itself, but there is a definite butter taste, which isn’t actually unpleasant but also not the goal, the caramel flavour is still prominent but it’s battling for attention. So the one albeit large modification I’d make is to use clotted cream instead of butter; I’m afraid this is another wonderfully high fat cream readily available in the UK that is largely unheard of elsewhere, so this is probably not a recipe for the American or other overseas reader, but replacing the butter with around 180g of clotted cream would I think give a more intense ice cream. But overall this has been a success, it’s a lovely taste and texture. We’re back with an original Gunter’s recipe next time, but this is a win for me!

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