Chocolate caramel Ninja Creami ice cream

This chocolate caramel Ninja Creami ice cream came into my head for two reasons. Firstly, I realised I needed to use up a tin of Top ‘n Fill caramel sitting in my fridge. Potentially quite an Australian product, Top ‘n Fill is essentially dulce de leche (more on this in a minute). Secondly, I was unable to score any speckled eggs this Easter and had to settle for caramel filled eggs. The combination of these two events inspired me to create a creamy and rich chocolate caramel ice cream flavour.

A number of my Ninja Creami recipes use sweetened condensed milk for the base. This is because liquid sugars create much creamier and chewier results than granulated sugar. Instead of sweetened condensed milk, I figured, why not use dulce de leche?

A note on Top ‘n Fill ‘caramel’

This is the brand sold in Australian supermarkets – I don’t know if it is sold elsewhere. However, the ingredients and nutritional information are markedly similar to dulce de leche brands worldwide.

Per 100g, Top ‘N Fill contains 55.8g sugar and 6g fat. These are the important measures when making ice cream. Too much sugar can result in an ice cream that doesn’t set and too much fat results in a split texture and oily mouthfeel.

Pertinent measures for other brands of Dulce De Leche per 100g (at the time of writing):

• La Serenísima Estilo Colonial = 50g sugar and 7g fat
• Chimbote = 56g sugar and 3.5g fat
• Havanna = 55g sugar and 6g fat
• Eagle brand = 56g sugar and 7.7g fat
• Nestle La Lechera = 57g sugar and 6g fat

Try to choose a brand with milk, sugar and maybe milk solids as the ingredients. Other added ingredients might have unintended consequences in an ice cream mixture.

The product of choice needs to be thick and have the same fat and sugar ratios as described above. Using any old caramel sauce in this recipe will not work.

Combining your ingredients

The trick to this recipe is ensuring that the ‘caramel’ has dissolved into the mixture. Top ‘N Fill has quite a thick and chunky texture and it takes a bit for the caramel to dissolve. I have tested two methods – stovetop + patience and blender. I will say that this will depend a little on your dulce de leche brand, but it’s worth discussing.

While the blender method is great for getting the tiny little bits of dulce de leche to disperse, it does whip up the cream. Of course, whipping cream creates bubbles which means our perfectly proportioned Creami mixture will go over the fill line. I also found that blending the mixture made it more prone to splitting in the machine. This generally happens when cream is processed long enough to start becoming butter. Of course, butter texture is not what we’re looking for in an ice cream.

So, the best way to go is to cook it patiently (but not for too long) and squash out all the chunks of dulce de leche. You might be able to use an immersion blender in short bursts – I haven’t tried this. Given that the blended version split, I’d proceed with a bit of caution there too.

You could experiment with whisking the Top ‘N Fill with a bit of cream to loosen it before adding it to the other ingredients. Alternatively, you could try to gently heat the Top ‘N Fill separately to loosen it before adding it to the mixture. The end goal is to ensure the caramel/dulce de leche dissolves into the mixture for an even sweetness and creaminess.

Ingredient notes

• A caramel made with sugar, cream and butter won’t work here. I know the name Top ‘N Fill caramel is misleading (seriously, why not just call it dulce de leche) but it is not the same as a butter containing caramel.
• I have never seen lactose free dulce de leche. A quick search seems to suggest you could add lactase to store bought dulce de leche, but I haven’t tried it. A quicker solution might be to take some lactase when you eat the ice cream.
• You can use lactose free thickened cream and lactose free milk to keep the lactose content down.
• I haven’t tested cocoa powder as opposed to Dutch processed cocoa powder. It will probably work, but I prefer the taste of Dutch processed.

Mix-in notes

I have used Cadbury Caramello mini eggs as my mix-in here. The double caramel chocolate combination is absolute heaven and I highly recommend it.

My first and most important note is related to the option to mix-in chocolate using the machine. I highly recommend not doing this! In all the times I have tried using this function with chocolate, I have never gotten a good result.

Because the Ninja Creami mixture is so cold, it often chills the chocolate so quickly that it becomes tasteless. I know some people like fridge chocolate but I am absolutely not one of them.

To be thorough, I did test using the mix-in function with cut up pieces of Caramello mini eggs. The result was a very gritty and finely ground chocolate that was almost like pieces of sand or desiccated coconut in the mixture. Although the taste was pleasant, the texture was not.

The best way to mix in chocolate eggs this Easter (or year round, frankly) is to chop them and serve them on top of your ice cream. This way you get plenty of chocolate in varying sizes and it is not overly cold and tasteless.

More Ninja Creami recipes

• Ninja Creami chocolate ice cream
• Ninja Creami strawberry ice cream
• Ninja Creami pistachio ice cream (and a vegan option here)
• Ninja Creami high protein ice cream recipes
• Ninja Creami custard base ice cream