My great-uncle Nat (inventor of the Movado Museum Watch), one day at a Friendly’s Ice Cream Parlor in the Berkshires, introduced me to the concept of coffee poured over vanilla ice cream. Years later, when I saw the movie Five Easy Pieces, I was reminded of that afternoon when my uncle argued with the server that he did not want a whole cup of coffee—just a spoonful to pour over the ice cream. He had me try the result, explaining that just that little bit of coffee did amazing things to the ice cream. It was true. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I discovered affogato—a shot of hot espresso poured over vanilla ice cream—when I was offered it as a dessert in an Italian restaurant. Affogato means “drowned,” which was a far cry from Uncle Nat’s more restrained concept.
And here is my still more deeply drowned version: I add a scoop of Dulce de Leche Ice Cream to a glass of iced coffee.
This brings to mind my best ice cream soda: We had a major power outage that lasted for so many days that everything in my freezer thawed, including a container of commercial dulce de leche ice cream. I had several bottles of Perrier water left from another project. Inspiration struck and yes—the combination of melted ice cream and sparkling water was divine!