I enjoy the wit of this combination, how it mimics this liminal season with the intermingling of fall fires and the cool cream of summer. I’d already taken to infusing my salted butter caramel with smoky lapsang souchong tea, so it seemed natural to introduce ribbons of it to the oak ice cream. I wanted to amplify the smoke so I used fumee de sel, a chardonnay oak smoked sea salt, in both the caramel and ice cream base. In addition to the smoked salt I added Tahitian vanilla beans to the base to compliment the vanilla notes in the toasted oak chips. The first time I only steeped the chips about 10-15 minutes. It was definitively oaky, but I wanted it more pronounced. So, the next attempt I let it sit for 30 minutes, which I found preferable. Feel free to experiment and find your oaky sweet spot. And I make a custard based ice cream, because it’s my preference, though just a bit more work (negligible in my opinion but these things are relative). If you want, for whatever reason, to skip the eggs and just heat the milk/cream/sugar, infuse it with the oak, then chill and churn, you can do that. It will just be a less rich, creamy end result. But still good. Either way, put it on a slice of pie. A slice of the pie that I will be sharing with you soon.