Sweet Spot: Affogato with Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream

I am a girl of simple tastes.  Believe me.  I sound fancy with my duck confit carbonara, mango chili pops and my trips to fancy food markets but at the end of the day, I am all about vanilla.

I think that Nick and I have agreed that this has been our favorite dessert of the summer.  Affogato literally means drowned in Italian and it is what an Italian does to vanilla ice cream once they have poured espresso over it.  Oh how I adore the poetic language Italians have for food!  Really, I could bore you at a dinner party.  But I digress.  To make an affogato you take a scoop of very good, very cold vanilla ice cream and pour a shot freshly made, very good and very hot espresso over it.  The ice cream melts just slightly so some of it pools with the espresso. If you could buy this at a stand you may never order another Starbucks Frappicino again.  In fact, I hope you don't.  (Sorry Starbucks, I respect the health insurance that you give your workers but not your monopolizing and over sweetening our coffee tastes.)

Home Made Vanilla Ice Cream

A wise cook told me recently that if you are preparing something that involves a kitchen gadget you should look at the recipes that come with gadget along with its manuel.  The manufacturer wants you to be satisfied with their product so they are going to give you the proportions of ingredients that will get you the best results.  This rang true for my ice cream maker.  I use a simple Donvier freezer bowl maker (click here to see types of ice cream makers) one that my mom had when we were kids.  This is the ratio that works best for mine but if you have a different ice cream maker it may vary. 

For one pint:

• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup milk
• 3/4 cup cream
• 1 tsp vanilla

In an electric mixer, beat the eggs and sugar first.  Then add the cream, milk and vanilla.  Then follow the instructions according to your ice cream maker.