cardamom caramel ice cream

hey hi hello!!

Welcome back to bake chats xx

As promised, I’m keeping the ice cream recipes coming all summer long. After the delight that was the cardamom, pf, espresso cream buns I’m on a bit of a cardamom kick. Which happens often, I’ll float through life aware of a flavor that I enjoy but one day I truly remember it exists and it’ll find it’s way into everything I make before becoming a passing thought once again.

Cardamom + caramel is a combo that I have this cyclical sorta love for. The deep notes from a caramel taken right to the edge of being straight burnt with the warm floral note of the cardamom? UGH. love love. The perfect flavor combo for a summer night enveloped in a soft warmth.

That is half the magic of the recipe, a deeeeeep caramel note. My hot take? 90% of people do not take their caramel far enough. The second it turns a light shade of translucent sand, they’ll deglaze. Not here, I need you to have faith and take it pretty far. You’ll be traipsing a fine line between just perfect and too far, so keep your milk near by because the second it’s ready you gotta deglaze and stop the process. A few seconds change everything. Spooky I know, but the flavor of a proper deep caramel here is so so worth it.

Hope you enjoy it xx

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Now I teetered and tottered between the right amount of sugar in my base ice cream recipe to caramelize. The more you caramelize the more of a caramel note you’ll get. You could caramelize none, and just infuse the milk for a straight cardamom ice cream or go balls to the wall and caramelize all of it, though I found the flavor to be less harmonious with the cardamom. Sometimes, that is the struggle of developing a recipe, every iteration is a really good one, but which one is “perfect” ya know? Depends on the mood, depends on the person. It’ll feel likeI’m splitting hairs sitting for an hour taste testing 5 versions of a recipe with the most minor adjustments, until I’ve fatigued my taste buds. This is my perfect version today but tomorrow it could be a version where the amount of sugar caramelized is 70/30 ya know. Taste is flux, live a little and figure out what you like.