Vietnamese Iced Coffee Ice Cream

Yep.

I am a coffee ice cream maniac. I think it all started with my mom's famous ice cream mud pie. My mom has made this since we were kids, and it's the one dessert all of my cousins and my sisters clamour for at Christmastime - even when there's a buffet of rich cakes and pastries and candies - it's the mud pie that gets the attention, our forks and spoons ready to tuck into the dark chocolate crust, creamy coffee ice cream middle and chocolate fudge topping.

Our family is also a mega huge fan of the Cambodian/Vietnamese restaurant here in Vancouver called Phomn Penh, or PP as we call it (if you're not from Vancouver and happen to be visiting, it is an essential food stop!). We've been going there for well over 20-odd years (probably more) and it is here where I got my first initial taste of Vietnamese iced coffee.

A little silver thingie went on top of a glass cup with some sweet creamy stuff on the bottom. Dark brown hot stuff drip-drip-dripped out the bottom, splashing onto the creamy stuff. Once it finished dripping, everything got all mixed together with ice and it was like a liquid power dessert that zinged like a coffee rocket through your veins upon first sip.

On a recent trip to T&T Supermarket with my dad, I finally bought my own "silver thingie" -- in fact, a Vietnamese coffee press. Slowly over a crazy busy week I procured all of my ingredients to make the iced coffee: sweetened condensed milk, and today French dark roast medium-coarse ground coffee! (I bought the beans at a local coffee shop and had them ground). And now... I am so buzzed on this strong coffee. Here is a great tutorial on how to make it. After I made a glass of iced coffee for myself, it was time to move on to the main project: Vietnamese Iced Coffee Ice Cream.

This is the easiest ice cream ever and it tastes crazy-delicious creamy. It maintains an excellent texture straight out of the freezer, no setting out at room temp to warm up a bit! Next time I am going to try playing around with the amount of sweetened condensed milk as I like my ice creams not-too-sweet, but I wonder if it would mess with the perfect consistency, as there are no eggs in this recipe, thus the condensed milk gives it its thick creaminess...

{Vietnamese Iced Coffee Ice Cream}

adapted from David Leibovitz's recipe in the very excellent ice cream book
"The Perfect Scoop".

You will need:

1 can of sweetened condensed milk
1 1/2 cups of French dark roast coffee, brewed strong!
1/2 cup heavy cream
a pinch of the dark roast coffee

1. Brew a very strong batch of espresso using French dark roast coffee.
2. Place sweetened condensed milk in medium bowl.
3. Whisk brewed coffee, heavy cream, pinch of dark roast coffee and sweetened condensed milk all together until combined.
4. Cover and set in refrigerator until well chilled, 3-4 hours. Or try power-chilling it in the freezer but watch carefully!
5. Pour into ice cream maker and churn it up according to maker's instructions. I churned it up for about 25 minutes.

Enjoy this simple and delicious recipe! And maybe use the buzz you get from it to power-clean your house or write a novel!

xo