As a former ice cream parlour employee during my high school and college years in the 1970’s, that was always an ice cream addict, I had to jump in and address the National Vanilla Ice Cream Day on July 23rd, National Hot Fudge Sundae Day on July 25th, and National Coffee Milkshake Day on July 26th. Here are a just a few ideas for some of my personal and family favorites. If you are on a diet, you really should skip this post! LOL!
Vanilla Ice Cream Desserts: My family loves Vanilla Ice Cream for its versatility, since it can be dressed up with almost any flavor topping.
For a special dessert we like to dress up vanilla ice cream up with a piece of pound cake or a short cake on the bottom of the dish, top with vanilla Ice Cream and then our favorite fresh fruit or ice cream topping or syrup, whipped cream and sometimes nuts, sprinkles, or a maraschino cherry on top.
Another great way to enjoy Vanilla Ice cream is to cover it with a chocolate Shell or other shell topping while sprinkling it with your favorite nuts, totally encasing the ice cream in the shell topped with the nuts. My family always thought this was a gourmet dessert and it only took me about 5 minutes!
Hot Fudge Day brings to mind all the wonderful flavors of ice cream that go really well with Hot fudge syrup: Vanilla of course, but so does Chocolate, Coffee, Peppermint, Chocolate Chip Mint, Butter Pecan, Cookie Dough, Peanut Butter, Cookies and Cream, Caramel, Moose Tracks, etc. Nuts, and fresh raspberries, strawberries and bananas also are great with Hot fudge.
My family loves some fun sundae combinations, most of which we top with whipped cream, nuts or sprinkles, and perhaps a maraschino cherry:
A scoop of chocolate ice cream with marshmallow topping and a scoop of vanilla ice cream with hot fudge.
For a three scoop treat we top chocolate ice cream with marshmallow, Coffee ice cream with the hot fudge and vanilla ice cream with butterscotch or caramel topping.
A really decadent combination is chocolate ice cream topped with hot fudge topping and topped with fresh strawberries or my favorite fresh raspberries.
Make your Hot fudge sundaes even better by putting a chocolate brownie or a piece of chocolate cake underneath it!
Coffee Milkshakes: Since Coffee milkshakes have been my favorite flavor of milkshake since the 1970’s, I have come up with many ways to make them:
I often found myself out of coffee ice cream or out of milk when I was single, but I always seemed to have plenty of vanilla ice cream in my freezer, so I came up with my own recipe for making a coffee milkshake with vanilla ice cream and regular brewed coffee or espresso. Mix it up by hand or in a blender and you have a quick and easy coffee milkshake.
Using the same method as above, try making your shake with chocolate, butter pecan, or any other flavor ice cream you think sounds good with coffee for a nice variation. I tried using egg nog flavored ice cream one year during the holidays and it is wonderful too! Think about what flavors you like for your expresso coffee and you can come up with some wonderful combinations all on your own.
For those of you who want a treat that has fewer calories, try making an ice cream soda instead. A scoop or two of coffee ice cream in a glass and filled up with soda water makes a refreshing summer indulgence with a lot less calories. If you aren’t concerned about calories you might also like to make it a mocha soda by adding a little chocolate syrup before adding the soda water.
If you have vanilla ice cream, another wonderful summer ice cream soda is to put vanilla (or coconut ice cream) with some crushed pineapple in a glass and top it off with soda water.
For alcoholic versions of the milkshakes and soda’s think about what liquors you enjoy with coffee or vanilla and add a shot to your drink. I like things like Kahlua, coffee or chocolate flavored liquors, Baileys, and Irish Cream with the coffee milk shakes and sodas, and Rum works great with the pineapple or pineapple and coconut sodas.
I hope this gives some of you a few ideas for beating the heat, since I think the entire country will be fighting the heat this weekend.
My husband and I both love coconut ice cream but cannot find it. When we were children (many years ago), you could buy it on a stick covered with chocolate. Yummmm! Does anyone know where to buy it? We don’t make ice cream, but we may have to learn.