Coffee Ice Cream with Caramel Sauce

Heat the milk, sugar, whole coffee beans, salt and 1/2 cup of the heavy cream in a medium saucepan until it’s warm and steamy, but not boiling. Once the mixture is warm, turn off the heat and cover. Remove from the heat and let steep at room temperature for 1 hour.

Reheat the coffee-infused milk mixture on medium heat, until again hot and steamy but not boiling.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the egg yolks. Slowly pour the warm coffee mixture into the egg yolks, whisking constantly so that the yolks are tempered by the warm milk, but not cooked by it.

Transfer the warmed egg yolks back into the saucepan. Stir the mixture constantly over medium heat with plastic spatula, scraping the bottom as you stir until the mixture thickens and coats the spatula. Do not overcook (eggs will be scrambled if you do). This can take about 10 minutes.

Pour remaining 1 cup of heavy cream into a medium size glass bowl, set on ice over a larger bowl.

Set a mesh strainer on top of the ice bathed heavy cream bowl and pour the warm egg yolk mixture into the heavy cream. Press on the coffee beans in the strainer to extract as much of the coffee flavor as possible, then discard the beans. Mixed in the vanilla and the finely grated ground coffee. Stir until cool over the ice bath and chill the mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator.

Pour the mixture into ice cream maker and process the mixture in the ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions (usually about 25 minutes).