SMS: Brown Sugar Vanilla Affogato

Affogato is one of my all time favorite desserts, and it is a wonder that it isn't served in more restaurants. Given the simplicity of it, perhaps the various pastry chefs feel that it doesn't showcase their talents enough... 

Affogato means "drowned in coffee" and is simply a scoop of ice cream with a shot of espresso poured over it. Heaven...

Not the easiest thing to photograph successfully - as you can see from the soupy mess above -but what it lacks in beauty, it more than makes up for in taste.

For Sweet Melissa Sundays this week, Karen of Karen's Cookies Cakes & More chose the brown sugar vanilla ice cream for all of us to make this week. 

Honestly, I wasn't excited. I've never been much of a vanilla ice cream person, and I put this off until the last possible minute. 

The recipe contains nonfat dry milk which is something I would normally skip if I saw it in a recipe - we drink raw milk fresh from the farm, so dehydrated dairy isn't really my cup of tea - but in the recipe notes, Melissa says that this is the secret ingredient. She states that it absorbs some of the moisture in the mixture and allows the ice cream to be extra creamy. 

I don't know if it was the dry milk, the 5 egg yolks or something else, but this was some of the most unbelievably creamy ice cream I have ever had. I even loved it on its own, which says a lot about how amazing it is. I think it would be a great base for all kinds of flavors.

I was going to post a few scoops of this creamy goodness naked in a bowl, when I noticed some coffee from breakfast still sitting in the French press, and I knew exactly what was to become of the ice cream.

Thanks to Karen for picking this surprisingly amazing recipe, please visit her blog for the recipe, and visit the SMS bakers page to see everyone else's yummy ice cream.