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One of my favorite indulgences is a bowl of coffee ice cream at the end of a long day. But often times the craving for coffee ice cream will hit when I don’t have any coffee flavored ice cream in the house. So I figured out a quick and easy solution. I love this 2-ingredient coffee ice cream so much that I don’t buy coffee flavored ice cream as often any more and actually prefer to just “make it myself”.
I’m the only person in my house that likes the taste of coffee ice cream, so when we buy ice cream I usually just buy a large gallon tub of plain vanilla. For around $5 it’s a great value, especially for larger families. With plain vanilla ice cream, everyone can flavor it to the way they like it. Some of the kidlets like to add M&M’s while others like to add crushed up Oreos but this mama loves to add espresso!
To make coffee flavored ice cream using plain vanilla is really easy, all one has to do is add a tablespoon or two of espresso. Sometimes the espresso is leftover from my morning latte that I cooled in the refrigerator and other times I just brew some fresh espresso and pour some over top of my bowl of vanilla ice cream. The cold of the ice cream, cools the espresso so I’m not worried about it melting too much. I prefer to mix the espresso and vanilla ice cream together to create a soft serve like texture and to make sure that the espresso flavor is evenly distributed throughout my ice cream. Since espresso is really strong I would recommend adding a little bit at a time until you find what you prefer. I love the bold and intense flavor of espresso so I usually add about 2 tablespoons myself while others may prefer just a hint of coffee so start off with 1/2 tablespoon and build upon that.