Easy Vietnamese-style Coffee Ice-cream

Not so much a jewellery or woodworking howto, this, but frankly my south-facing workshop has been insanely hot the last few weeks - over 40C on some days! - so personal cooling is important.

This is really, really easy. If you can make a cup of coffee, you can make this. You don't even need an ice-cream machine although it does make things easier if you do.

The 'secret' ingredient is fresh mint. Sounds daft, but roll with this one, it really works.

Gather some mint. Chuck it in your cafetiere or drip filter or espresso jug (so the coffee ends up on the mint, not in with the coffee grounds).  If you don't have any mint, don't sweat it, the end result will still be tasty. Luckily our garden has bushes of the stuff.

While that's brewing, nice and strong, pour a tin of sweetened condensed milk into a jug. Opening the lid of the tin is probably the hardest step of this whole recipe.

Add your coffee, stir well. You can go 50/50 milk to coffee, or more, or less, whatever you like. I probably wouldn't put more than twice as much coffee as milk because then the fat/sugar content is going to be getting a little low and the ice-cream may end up a bit grainy. Still delicious, of course, but at 50/50 this makes a near-foolproof smooth and soft confection.

That's it, into the ice-cream churn it goes. If you don't have an ice-cream maker, put it in a container in the freezer and take it out for a good stir every fifteen minutes or so until it's set.

Serve in alluring soft-focus with whatever you fancy on the side. As this is basically just coffee, it's entirely OK to have for breakfast if you want. Yes, I just gave you permission to have ice-cream for breakfast. That's the great thing about being a grown-up.

With all the time and money you've just saved, when not head over to my Etsy store and buy yourself something nice.  Because it would hardly be a blog post without at least a tiny advert..