Dulce de Leche Ice Cream

Dulce de leche ice cream is richly indulgent caramel ice cream with rivers of silky dulce de leche swirled through it. It is the kind of ice cream that’s so good that you hide the last few bites of in the back of the freezer to keep it to yourself.

Dulce de Leche Ice Cream

If you’ve been around here at Foodie with Family for long, you probably know that one of my sons is a professional ballet dancer and I moonlight as a ballet photographer at the conservatory where he studied for a decade. Each summer they bring a dozen or more promising ballet students from Argentina to study at their summer intensive program and this year Ximena -one of the lovely, generous chaperones- gifted me a jar of Argentinian Chimbote Dulce de Leche.

As strong as the temptation was to sit down and eat the entire jar’s worth with a spoon by myself, I realized that was a bad plan. My first thought was to spoon it over ice cream, but then I remembered the little pints of dulce de leche ice cream Haagen Daz makes. Why put it ON ice cream when you can make it part of the ice cream?

Sea Salt Caramel Ice Cream

I started with a very basic egg-free ice cream base and melted two thirds of my coveted container of dulce de leche into it along with a good pinch of salt. Always, always add a pinch of salt when making anything with caramel. Why salt? Well… NERD ALERT! Science content incoming!

Salt fires up and boosts the receptivity of sweet-sensitive taste cells in the mouth. In other words, salt makes caramel taste sweeter and richer.

The little bit of salt added to the ice cream doesn’t make it salty, it makes it sweeter! But if you -like me- like a little more salt in your dessert, you can sprinkle a few flakes of a good sea salt like Maldon over your scoop of ice cream.

If you’re not lucky enough to have a bunch of ballerinas bring you a pot of Argentinian dulce de leche, don’t fear! You can either order legitimate Argentinian dulce de leche pretty inexpensively by the four pack from Amazon or make your own similar homemade dulce de leche caramel. I can think of many worse things than having 3 extra pots of dulce de leche lying around.

How to Make Ice Cream with an Ice Cream Maker

Each type of ice cream maker is a little bit different. I have a compressor powered ice cream maker that doesn’t require pre-freezing anything. This type of maker is handy for folks like me who make more than one type of ice cream back-to-back on a regular basis. The one I have has a function that allows me to put a warm ice cream base in the machine and chill it before churning, too.

I’ve also had and loved the type of ice cream maker where you keep freeze the bowl a few hours ahead of ice cream making. Kitchen Aid also makes one of these that’s compatible with their stand mixers.

You can still do multiple types of ice cream in short order if you have a spare bowl that you also freeze. You’re limited only by the number of bowls you can keep frozen. These tend to have a smaller footprint on the kitchen counter but take up more freezer space because of the bowl.

If you’re into old-fashioned ice cream making or making large amounts at one time, you may want to opt for an old-school electric or hand crank operated ice cream maker. This particular model is an electric one that has a bonus hand-crank if you prefer it.

Our salted dulce de leche ice cream recipe works well in all three of those types of ice cream makers.