Gelato al Caramello

(Unedited)

Please read the Gelato Introduction if you haven’t already. A caramel gelato is easy to make, but it's also very easy to burn the caramel.

This gelato has a light caramel flavor and is very satisfying. However, I might try to use more caramel (i.e., more sugar) and include some egg yolks to keep it from getting too soft.

550g fresh WHOLE milk, preferably sourced locally

225g fresh heavy cream, preferably sourced locally

20g softened unsalted butter

200g sugar

pinch of salt

60g non-fat milk powder

2g tara gum powder (or carob powder)

1. Weigh ingredients separately. Pre-mix dry ingredients using a whisk. Keep heavy cream separate from milk initially.

2. Put the sugar in a wide frying pan and spread it out evenly. Heat at medium-high. Do not stir, but it's ok to rotate the pan around and shuffle sugar a little using the pan's handle.

3. Once the sugar reaches 160C, immediately remove it from the heat, even if it's not all melted. It is very easy to burn caramel, so don't linger.

4. Mix in the butter, roughly half the cream, and a pinch of salt into the pan using a spatula to help the caramel stop cooking in the hot pan. If it crystallizes some or gets lumpy, don't worry about. We'll fix that later. [However, I hope I can figure out how to eliminate that lumpiness at this step, just for general caramel making.]

5. Slowly heat the whole milk, the other half of the cream, and then all the caramel (still somewhat hot, and you may need to scrape it out of the pan). Stir continuously with a whisk.

6. Slowly stir in the pre-mixed dry ingredients. Stir continuously with a whisk.

7. Continue heating the mixture on medium heat until it gets to 65C. This will happen pretty quickly due to the hot caramel. Stir continuously with a whisk.

8. Remove the mixture from the heat and use an immersion blender to break up any hard caramel bits. When you stop hearing the caramel breaking up, it's close to done.

9. Transfer the pot into an ice-water bath in a larger bowl and stir continuously until the temperature gets back to close to room temperature. This is standard practice for pasteurization.

10. Cover the mixture tightly with plastic wrap and store overnight in the refrigerator. This allows the flavor to mature. It may remain in the refrigerator for up to 72 hours.

11. When it’s time to churn the mixture, turn on the chill part of the gelato machine to get it a little cold for 3 minutes.

12. Turn on the churner and slowly pour the mixture into the built-in bowl of the gelato machine. Replace plastic top.

13. It should be ready to eat in about 25 minutes with the Musso Lello 4080. Turn off the chiller 30 seconds before completing the churning process. If the gelato machine shows signs of struggling to turn, it’s past done. Other gelato machines may never get it hard enough to eat and may require that you put it in the freezer for some amount of time.

14. Serve gelato in small bowls that were pre-cooled in the refrigerator for 20 minutes.

15. Store uneaten gelato in the freezer. To get it soft enough to eat later, you may need to put it into your refrigerator for up to 1.5 hours. But keep in mind that the consistency won’t be as good as it was right out of the machine. In any case, the best option is to make only as much as you need and store the remaining mixture in the refrigerator until the next day when you can make it again, but keep in mind that you will need to churn it for much less time.

Here the sugar has just started to melt:

Here the sugar has reached 160C. I removed it immediately from the heat even though the sugar is not completely dissolved:

After mixing in the butter, half the cream, and the pinch of salt. It's a little lumpy, but this will dissolve when we make the gelato: