Salted Butter Caramel Ice Cream

I know I keep saying this, but I have got to start disciplining myself to write up these projects in a reasonable time. I've wanted to make this recipe since I saw it on David Lebovitz's blog almost six months ago. Salted Butter Caramel Ice Cream! Who doesn't love any component of that title. The fun part is that the ice cream is so fancy, but the ingredients are so basic. Sugar, butter, milk cream, etc. It's all in how you prepare them. I did finally buy my first fleur de sel (fancy sea salt). Good stuff. Will just would not let me use regular kosher salt.

I do think I took the caramel to just a little bit too high a temperature. The final ice cream was noticeably bitter in kind of a dark coffee way. Great flavor, but perhaps for a specific palate. A friend of mine said she had some with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and that sounds to me like the perfect complement to mellow things out. In the pictures, you can see how the recipe called for a sheet of hard caramel as a mix-in, which I got to crush up with my mortar and pestle. Don't use that thing often enough.