Cheesecake Ice-cream with Confiture de Lait

Cheesecake Ice-cream with Confiture de Lait 

I love Cheesecake made with Cream Cheese. Its creamy and delicious but then again till now all the Cheesecake that I have made were baked and contained eggs. I was in a real fix when I came over to Bombay for a few months since I neither have an oven in this temporary house nor does my other half eat eggs and once one has had the baked cheesecake the unbaked ones seem incomplete . I was reluctantly thinking of making eggless bakeless cheesecake when the idea of a Cheesecake Icecream came to my mind.

Truth be told a lot of people indirectly contributed to this dessert. Some months back Nazneem, a lovely lady had posted about Dulce De Leche on a food group and it immediately caught my attention. This was back in September and then there was one festival after the other which meant that I was busy making traditional Indian desserts such as the Bengali Cootage Cheese Jalebi, Bengali Gulab Jamun called Pantua, Kalakand, Malai Chomchom etc , the recipe for all which you would find in this blog's Dessert section.

Confiture de Lait 

Anyway coming back to the recipe I made my own Confiture de Lait aka Dulce De leche which in simple English is called Milk Jam. Its a creamy reduced caramelized milk.

Many people take a can of condensed milk and steams it till its caramelized but I for one like getting to the bottom of a recipe and more importantly I am not too fond of shelved packaged fresh food and when you make your own Milk Jam you can add a bit of Vanilla which gives it an amazing flavour .

I was in love with Confiture de Lait but the surprise was when my Cheesecake Ice-cream which turned out smooth creamy and amazingly rich and all this was made using a non-electric hand held whisk. This frozen delight had no ice-crystals at all.

This is a 2 day procedure and completely worth it.

So here is the recipe

Makes 3 to 4 serving

For the Confiture de Lait

1 litre whole milk
500gm sugar
1 tsp vanilla beans
1 tsp butter

For the Cheesecake Ice-cream

226gm aka 1 packet of Philadelphia Cream Cheese
200ml of cream
1 tbsp vinegar
2/3rd cup sugar
1/2 cup water Few drops of lemon
1/2 tsp vanilla beans

On the first day simply mix the vinegar with the cream and let the sour cream form for 24 hours at room temperature.

The Sour Cream after 24 hours of fermentation 

Now start with the Confiture De Lait. Remember that you would probably have a lot more confiture de lait topping than required but its delicious and makes for a lip-smacking spread on buttered toast or as a dip for apples etc.

The Final Confiture de Lait 

Take a heavy bottomed deep pan and add the milk, sugar , butter and vanilla and put it on the lowest flame possible and keep stirring every  7 minutes for the next 45 minutes. Make sure you use a broad spatula to scrape the bottom of the pan so that it doesn't stick to the bottom. Once the colour turns beige which takes about 1.5 hours from the start you must keep stirring it continuously to avoid burning the Confiture de Lait. Once done if the result looks grainy don'y worry about it. Just wait for it to cool down and blend it well and you have smooth creamy caramelized milk jam aka Confiture de Lait. Once cool put it in the refrigerator.

The next day bring the Cream cheese to room temperature . Just keep it at room temperature for an hour or so. I live in India and it takes very little time to soften the cream cheese but in case you stay in a cold country it might take you a bit of time. Instructions are provided in the pack on how to soften cream cheese. By now your sour cream would have thickened and ready to be used.

Make the sugar syrup by combining the 2/3rd cup sugar and water and add the lemon juice to prevent crystallization and then simply let it cool down.

Whisk the cream cheese, sour cream , vanilla beans with the sugar syrup. Add the syrup bit by bit and keep tasting so that you get the perfect amount of sweetness for your taste buds . Chill it for 2 hours in the refrigerator and then whisk it again and transfer to an air-tight container and freeze for 4 hours and serve delicious creamy smooth Cheesecake Ice-cream and top it with the Confiture de lait.

Important tips :-

1. The butter added to the Confiture de Lait keeps the milk as smooth as possible 
2. In my experience sugar syrup leads to a smoother consistency 
3. The lemon juice added to the sugar syrup when making it prevents crystallization 
4. Bring the Confiture de Lait to room temperature before serving. You should let it come to room temperature, 1 hour before serving.