Vietnamese Iced Coffee Ice Cream

When my husband mentioned that he wanted to make the Vietnamese fish sauce chicken wings from Pok Pok this past weekend, my first thought was "YES, PLEASE!" and my second thought was, what should I make for dessert?  These wings are incredible (check out pic at the bottom of this post); and they deserve a dessert that is equally great. Whenever I visit a Vietnamese restaurant I always have to order an iced coffee, which is basically just strong black coffee served with sweetened condensed milk. This ice cream is about as simple as that, with a few little extras. This is one of my favorite recipe's from David Lebovitz's cookbook, The Perfect Scoop; I decided to experiment with it a bit this time around by adding some Kahlua. A few tablespoons of any 40 proof alcohol added to homemade ice cream keeps it from freezing too hard, though since this is already a pretty soft freezing ice cream, I only added a little to enhance the coffee flavor.

Death By Chocolate Ice Cream

As Samantha mentioned in her post yesterday, my husband and I hosted a 1920s themed murder mystery party for my birthday. My sister kindly prepared a birthday tiramisu for dessert, which is one of my favorites, and I made some chocolate ice cream to serve with it. I call it death by chocolate ice cream because I served it at a murder mystery party, but it is truly very rich and chocolatey, so do be careful.

If you've never made your own ice cream, do not fret because this is a great recipe for beginners. It comes from The Perfect Scoop, by David Lebovitz, the source of many of my favorite ice cream recipes.