The I2C peripheral is DMA - a write just queues an operation descriptor in a hardware FIFO, and interrupts fire whenever something exciting happens or the FIFO is drained. The synchronous implementation is just blocking on a condition set by the interrupt handler.

But this is exactly the kind of thing the SPI peripheral is meant for. This cannot be said for the I2C peripheral, with its measly fast mode support.

Depending on the chip and your usecase, you might also want to use I2S for your DAC.