Week Nine - Dairy Free Salted Caramel

Greetings, friends! Sorry for being a day late, yet again. I spent the day yesterday with my in-laws, checking out the van Gogh exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I highly recommend it for anyone able to check it out! But I'm home now and ready to regale you with this week's ice cream adventures. Here we go!

When I decided to create this blog earlier this year, the very first request I received was for a dairy free flavor. I have since had a couple other people ask for one so I figured I'd give it a shot. Originally, I was going to attempt some sort of chocolate and coconut concoction but at the last minute I decided to try to make it vegan, instead of just dairy free. I have some vegan sugar in the house so I thought a salted caramel would be perfect. (I should warn you at this point that I was taking photos at night with a crappy camera so my pictures are not very good this week. Sorry!)

The first step was to make the caramel, so I started with the white sugar:

This sugar immediately turned a strange color, almost as if I had added cream to the sugar. Except I hadn't. I drizzled a little onto a paper towel to taste it and it immediately hardened. Boo. So I poured it into a paper bowl (where it completely hardened, forming a pretty cool weapon, within minutes) and started from scratch with the dark brown sugar:

This time around, the sugar sat on the heat for about five minutes refusing to melt so I added a little water to help things along. The caramel quickly began to form, bringing with it a terribly gross odor. Garbage. And on to sugar number 3! Unfortunately, those are the only two vegan sugars I have in my house so the recipe at this point became dairy free instead of vegan. Boo. But for those who still wish to read on, I present to you this week's flavor...

Dairy Free Salted Caramel

Ingredients:

1 cup soy milk
2 cups soy creamer
1.5 cups sugar
1/2 tsp sea salt
2 tbs corn starch (Is corn starch vegan? I wasn't sure about that so I may have failed with the vegan one after all.)

 

1. Pour the sugar into a large sauté or sauce pan, spreading evenly, and cook over medium heat. Do not stir until the sugar at the edge of the pan starts to melt.

2. At this point, begin to push the sugar toward the center with a heat-proof spatula. It's okay if lumps form, they'll melt later.

3. Once the sugar is completely melted, allow to cook for another minute or two until it turns a deep (but not too dark) copper color. Remove from heat and stir in sea salt.

4. Slowly add the soy milk, whisking vigorously as you pour to keep caramel from seizing. Once the milk is added, return to medium heat and add the soy milk. Continue to cook, stirring all the while, for a few more minutes.

5. Pour through a fine sieve into a clean bowl and cover with plastic wrap, pressing it down directly on top of the mixture. Refrigerate until completely cooled.

6. Transfer cooled mixture into bowl of ice cream maker and churn. Transfer to a freezer safe container and freeze.

7. Enjoy!