Salted Caramel Ice Cream

Salted caramel, which now is a popular flavor at every level of restaurant dining, began as a fancy French invention. In the late 1970s, chocolatier Henri Le Roux decided to make caramels using the famed salted butter of Brittany, where his shop was. The Salon International de la Confiserie crowned his caramels “The Best Sweet In France” in 1980; and from that point on, salted caramel flavor moved from deluxe candy to high-end desserts of all kind, to artisan coffee shops, then finally to not-so-hifalutin sweets in mid-level American restaurants. Among the beneficiaries of this trend was ice cream, in the form of salted caramel sauce for other flavors and salted caramel flavor that is so well complemented by hot fudge or chocolate syrup. Honey and Salt restaurant in North Carolina offers ice cream sandwiches of vanilla and salted caramel ice cream between big, round chocolate chip cookies.