Can I Whip The Cream Before Adding It To The Caramel In The No-Churn Salted Caramel Bourbon Ice Cream?

Our answer

Nigella's No-Churn Salted Caramel Bourbon Ice Cream is an easy-to-make combination of double (heavy) cream and condensed milk caramel. The two are simply whisked together with some bourbon and sea salt flakes and transferred to the freezer.

You could whip the cream to soft peaks in advance but the condensed milk caramel (or dulce de leche) is much more viscous than regular condensed milk and it is a bit harder to fold it into the cream without knocking out too much air from the mixture. You would need to first add a good spoonful of whipped cream to the caramel, fold this in to lighten the mixture and then fold in the remaining whipped cream. In our opinion whisking the two together is easier if you have a free-standing or hand-held electric mixer, though if you are making the ice cream by hand then whisking the cream first could be easier on the arms. If you are worried about over whisking the mixture, you can always stop the electric mixer when the mixture is starting to thicken up and then whisk slowly in very short bursts or finish the whisking by hand.