One source of sadness that has resulted from leaving my corporate job for cooking school is that I really miss that surrogate family known to many as “work friends”. It’s a tradeoff that I’m a bit accustomed to, having been fortunate enough to have amazing colleagues to leave for new opportunities in abundance, but even so, I hadn’t been with my most recent company for all that long, and there were some awesome people there who made me feel like I belonged.

With one colleague in particular, there was a whole lot of bonding right from the start, as we negotiated the ins and outs of our new roles at the company. As with most work colleagues, we bonded at happy hour, where we discovered our common adoration for cured meats, dirty martinis, bearded men, and digging in the dirt. Is there a word for “bromance” that applies to two women? We were finishing each other’s sentences by the end of week 2.

It had been a few weeks since I’d see this colleague, and I’d gone into withdrawal. I arranged a dinner ASAP-STAT at home for us and our bearded beloveds, to catch up on, wow, weeks of stuff that I’d been missing. Having just come from an ice cream class presented by Ben Van Leeuwen, the owner of the Brooklyn-based ice cream company Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream, I had the perfect dessert recipe for the occasion.

Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream has earned a sterling reputation in New York City for making some of the best smooth, dense, and creamy ice cream we’ve ever seen, in some of the most simple, yet enticing flavors. The company is committed to using only the best ingredients that they can get their hands on, and Ben, who co-owns the company with his wife, speaks passionately about their undying  commitment to quality and taste.

The Van Leeuwens sell their ice creams from the windows of trucks that are painted bright yellow and parked in various locations in Manhattan and Brooklyn. I became a disciple from just one lick of the fresh currant flavor (now discontinued, for a very silly reason having to do with arbitrary regulations placed on small companies by the FDA) one hot afternoon in Soho, and I was psyched to have the opportunity to spend an evening at the Brooklyn Kitchen, getting pointers from Ben on how to step up my homemade ice cream game.

Ben demonstrated how to make a caramel-lavender flavor, which I’ve adapted here by adding some steps to make the caramel flavor a bit more developed (not to mention the caramel a bit easier to deal with) and I’ve removed the lavender part because I’m not crazy abut lavender in food. That is the wonderful thing about ice cream – once you have the basic ingredient ratios mastered, you can run wild infusing flavors into your ice cream.

I was pleased with the smooth, rich, and creamy results, which I did not get a chance to photograph post final freeze, that looked a lot more like perfect scoops. What you see here are photos before the overnight freeze, which I begrudgingly dished out for the camera (knowing that I always forget to take pictures when guests are here), and then devoured in painful bites that, ahm, I did not enjoy, and I swear, I did not lick the bowl clean. Or contemplate going back for seconds. Or sneak another spoonful just before bed. Oh the torture of preparing homemade ice cream.

Gabe and Eva were lucky that I was able to shore up the willpower to stay away from the freezer until their visit, and there was a strong lobby going to call the recipe “toasted marshmallow ice cream”, but I’m holding strong to my original decision – since the suggested name reminds me of those artificially flavored jelly beans, and I wouldn’t want anyone to associate this natural deliciousness with something artificial.

Burnt Sugar Ice Cream
Adapted from Ben Van Leeuwen’s class at the Brooklyn Kitchen

makes 4 bigger servings, or 6 smaller ones

Please note that this recipe requires an overnight cooling, and ideally, an overnight freeze as well (try not to eat it all before then – I dare you!)

2 cups whole milk

2 cups heavy cream

1 cup sugar, plus more to taste

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

8 egg yolks

Line a cookie sheet with parchment, and lightly grease parchment with vegetable oil.

Stir 1 cup sugar and 3 tablespoons water in heavy medium saucepan over medium heat until sugar melts. Increase heat to high and boil without stirring until mixture turns dark amber, occasionally swirling pan and brushing down sides with wet pastry brush, about 7 minutes. Immediately add 1/2 of the cream (1/2 cup). The mixture will bubble vigorously. Continue stirring and do not stop until desired color is reached. Pour caramel onto greased parchment and allow it to cool. Set aside and allow to harden. (Caution, cooked sugar is EXTREMELY hot – do not, under any circumstances let it touch your skin)

In a double broiler or a large, heavy pan filled with water with a bowl set on top, place the milk, the remaining cream, and the caramel over medium heat, stirring occasionally. Whisk the egg yolks until they become smooth and light yellow. When the milk mixture begins to steam, stir more frequently, until caramel is completely dissolved. Remove 1/4 cup of the milk mixture and slowly add it to the egg yolks, whisking vigorously the whole time. Once the 1/4 cup of milk mixture has been whisked in, quickly whisk the egg mixture into the milk mixture in the double broiler over low to medium heat. The mixture should thicken steam. Taste the mixture and add additional sugar, a little at a time, until the desired sweetness is met. To test if the custard is done, stick a wooden spoon into the mixture and draw a vertical line down the center of the spoon. If the line stays strongly visible, the custard is ready.

Remove the custard from the heat. Using a fine strainer, strain the custard into a bowl resting on top of an ice bath to catch any bits of cooked egg or caramel. Allow the bowl of custard to cool over the ice until it is just warm, then cover it with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

Remove from fridge and pour into an ice cream maker. Run the machine until the ice cream has soft-serve consistency. Transfer the ice cream to a container (metal is preferred, but I’ve found plastic is also OK) and place in the freezer for a minimum of 5 hours.

Because this ice cream contains no preservatives, it will not keep longer than one week. Fortunately, it’s not too much of a hardship to use up in that time.