Vietnamese Coffee Ice Cream

Coffee ice cream has been and always will be my favorite.  This Vietnamese coffee ice cream, made with sweetened condensed milk and very strongly brewed coffee, is extra special. 

I used David Lebovitz's eggless and super easy recipe from The Perfect Scoop.  I used some Trung Nguyen coffee that Tim brought back from Vietnam.  So good.

Coffee Oreo Cognac Ice Cream

I'm still working my way through the 16 egg yolks leftover from my egg-white heavy (is that an oxymoron?) American flag cake. Egg yolks just beg to be made into ice cream.

I asked Chuck if she had an ice cream flavor preference. "Something with Oreos," she said. In contrast, I was thinking, "Something with booze." Enter this recipe from Simply Recipes, which combines both AND adds coffee, which makes it even better.I made a couple small changes to the recipe, namely using instant espresso powder rather than instant coffee, and cognac rather than rum. Also, I used 8 egg yolks.

Delicious... I think the only additional change I would make is to add more Oreos at the end for chunkiness.

Mocha Cookies with White Chocolate Chips

New favorite cookies.
Mocha cookies with white chocolate chips.
Rich and fudgey, with a hint of coffee, chewy in the middle and crisp on the edges.
Yum. The recipe called for instant coffee powder, but I used instant espresso powder. Not sure if it makes a difference... I also threw in a handful of semi-sweet chocolate chips in addition to the white chocolate chips, just for shits and giggles.

Birthday Goodies!

For Chuck's 27th birthday, she got two desserts... one hand-held, relatively mess-free dessert for the keg party, and one melty, delicious ice cream cake for the after-party.

1. One-Bowl Mini Chocolate Cupcakes with Vanilla Buttercream Frosting:
This recipe from the Other Martha is super easy- one bowl, one measuring cup, one measuring spoon. Plus, the cupcakes stay really moist. I had just a little bit less than the required amount of cocoa, so I topped it off with some espresso powder, which I think really complimented the chocolate.
The buttercream frosting is decadent... don't look at the ingredient list, though.

2. Ice Cream Cake with Chocolate Crunchies and Heath Bar:
The ice cream cake I made is loosely based on this recipe, but with chocolate and coffee ice creams, topped with Heath bar crumbles. The chocolate crunchies in the cake are great- I was worried they would get soggy between ice cream layers, but they stayed crunchy!
If you do try making this cake, though, I warn you: beware the leaky springform pan!

Mocha Meringue Bark: Fail.

I saw this mocha meringue bark recipe being made on Claire Robinson's 5 Ingredient Fix and thought it looked easy and pretty tasty... how could it go wrong? It's got almond, chocolate chips, coffee, meringue... seems straightforward and good in theory.

I'm not sure where it went wrong, the recipe or my methods, but it somehow tasted wrong... not very coffee-like, kinda flat and strangely textured, generally odd. No likey.