{Goat Milk} Vanilla Bean Ice Cream with Cajeta Swirl

I am waiting on new cultures to arrive before I can make more cheese and we were getting a little overrun with milk. Yesterday I made a half a gallon of yogurt and used another half gallon of milk to make cajeta in the crock pot. We have made dulce de leche in the crock pot before using store bought condensed milk, but I wanted to try it with with our fresh goat milk.

It took all day to cook down, but it is so, so good. It tasted a little like a mix between caramel and butterscotch.

To Make Cajeta:

1/2 gallon goat milk
2 cups sugar
Seeds of 1 vanilla bean
dash of cinnamon/ 1 cinnamon stick
1 tsp baking soda dissolved in 1 T water

You can make this on the stovetop (quicker, but more hands-on) or in the crock pot (much longer, but does not require constant attention). I went with the crock pot so I didn't have to stand and stir for hours.

Place the milk, vanilla, cinnamon and sugar in the crock pot and turn on to high. Stir every so often until the milk is hot and sugar is dissolved. Stir in the baking soda water. Continue cooking on high stirring every so often. I just stirred as I came into the kitchen, maybe once an hour or so. Keep the lid off since the goal is for the milk to reduce and caramelize. It took about 12 hours to thicken up to the consistency I wanted (like a sauce/topping) if you want it thicker just cook a little longer.

And this morning Annika and I made vanilla bean ice cream to go with our cajeta. Sometimes I make the more involved ice cream by making a custard with eggs, milk and sugar but today I went the simple route.

To Make Vanilla Bean Ice Cream (raw):

2 cups raw goat milk
1 cup goat milk yogurt
3/4 cup sugar
Seeds of 1 vanilla bean

Whisk all of this together and pour into a 1.5 qt ice cream maker and mix as the machine instructs. The key here is to have 3 cups of liquid. You can use a combination of heavy cream, whole milk, skim milk etc. The lower the fat the less creamy the ice cream will be. I choose 2 cups of whole, raw goat's milk and 1 cup of yogurt this time to see how the yogurt affected the consistency.

We also swirled about 1/2 cup of our cajeta into the ice cream just as it finished processing.

It wasn't quite all the way frozen by lunch time....but it was still really good!