Rhubarb Ice Cream with a Caramel Swirl

This Melissa Clark recipe produced a wonderfully interesting ice cream! The base is made largely with sour cream. This gives the base a tart flavor that I found quite compelling.

The rhubarb is lightly cooked (with sugar, but no added water), and the juice released by the fruit is concentrated (longer cooking time). I found the rhubarb a bit stiff, and when I make this again, I'll cook it slightly longer.

The caramel swirl was the part that had me worried. I'm a disaster with melting sugar -- recent flan and creme brulee experiences compounded a growing sense that this is something I cannot do. However, Melissa Clark's instructions actually worked for me!

I do not own an ice cream maker, and so I followed some of the advice recently presented on TheKitchn. I put the bowl into my freezer, and periodically I beat it with my mixer. In retrospective, I wish I had made the ice/salt slurry at the beginning - I would not have had to stay up so late.

I was surprised at how good this was. A bit grainy because of my freezing method, but still very respectable.

I agree that it's really nice, the flavours combine very well, but it not yet really perfect (or our execution was flawed).

I agree with QueezleSister that the rhubarb was a bit stiff; in our case, the rhubarb was much colder than the rest of the ice cream (perhaps due to a higher water content?), and that contrast wasn't that nice. I think you won't have that problem if you cook the rhubarb a little longer so that it disintegrates more.

The caramel ended up as big (very delicious) blobs in the ice cream. Either it cooled down too much when we added it to the ice cream, or it needs a little more cream (I think the former, DH the latter - but he was the one making the ice cream).