Of course, how typical that as a fairly motivated person, I think that my vacation and free time are wasted unless I'm doing something interesting. Oh, I could go on and on about how the work-life balance of our generation and times has become a 24/7 work lifestyle, or how being busy is the new way we measure social value, or how we're now happiest when we're busy, but we've all seen this article/headline/podcast story plenty of times. We've all thought and nodded "YES THIS IS WHAT IS WRONG," maybe even have written a motivational sticky that says something like "take time," or "no decision you make is ever a mistake," (my personal sticky) and yet we're all still going to continue trying really hard regardless and occasionally reading and nodding to these articles.
So I'm not going to delve into that (or I'm going to try to not), because these kinds of commentaries about how we should live our life kind of remind me of both commencement speeches and horoscopes- nothing new is ever really said and if you make it vague it enough, it will always apply no matter what kind of life you're living (plus, I'm not getting paid to make a click bait article about 10 ways to improve your life here).
To make this semi-relevant to cinnamon ice cream with dulce de leche, there are times when my life can be interesting and varied- like the dash or heaping of spices I like to add to different things. And then there are times when it can be dull-like a creamy white ice cream base that's just waiting for something extra. Which frankly, is what most ice cream is. It's milk, cream, sometimes eggs, infused with something partway through or swirled through at the end. Technique-wise, ice cream is pretty boring and standard, but the ability to mix and add almost anything keeps it an easy way to do interesting things. Maybe thats all I need in my free time, lazy ways to be interesting.
As a not-quite-real-adult, I don't really have a large spice assortment, particularly in the savory department. But cinnamon is that warm, Christmas-time, fuzzy feelings spice that is the Target of spices- ubiquitous enough for fake adults, but with the potential to be fancy when it wants to be. David Lebovitz likes to be fancy obviously, but again, being not a real adult, I don't have 3 types of cinnamon (surprise! there are different types of cinnamon!). So I went with the in-between fancy option of using normal cinnamon sticks to infuse the cream base and hand grated cinnamon rather than the powdered stuff every single other normal person uses. I did initially have a hard time tasting the cinnamon in the base, and consequently shaved about 75% of a cinnamon stick into the base for extra taste at the end, which definitely helped make the churned ice cream taste like cinnamon. I'd probably add more sticks or seep longer next time (in addition to buying fancy cinnamon).
Cinnamon aside, I had an extra can of sweetened condensed milk I never used, so I made dulce de leche out of it via the microwave method to mix in at the end. Within the realms of homemade dulce de leche, people online are seriously divided. I've only tried this microwave method so I can't really comment, but based on the 5-10 tabs I read, I'd say microwave is one of the safer methods, and adding a 1/2 tsp of water every couple of minutes seems to help with the problem of the dulce de leche becoming too brittle before it is done. I was trying to go for more of a swirled effect with the dulce de leche, but fairly thick toffee + cold = lumps rather than streaks. No complaints flavor or texture-wise though as the dulce de leche was still soft in the ice cream, albeit you got it in rather large quantities rather than interspersed.
Cinnamon Ice Cream via David Lebovitz
Dulce De Leche via Cooking for Engineers (multiple methods exist)
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