Ice Cream & Roulade

Here's an interesting thing I learned today - a roulade can be not only sweet but also savoury. With its origins being European and its name obviously a French word, it's not surprising then to learn that savoury roulades are popular in France, Germany (known as Rouladen), Italy (known as Braciole), Hungary (known as Szüz) and Poland (known as zrazy).

In England, the roulade is definitely associated with the sweet kind, a good example being coffee roulade. There are lots of other variations on a theme for sweet roulades but coffee roulade springs to mind as I write this post because a friend recently told me that one of her longest standing friends Tina was a very good cook who happened to enjoy coffee roulade with a serving of ice cream. Now I'm not sure what kind of ice cream Tina put onto her roulade (it was probably vanilla ice cream) but if any of my readers want to try some coffee ice cream, I actually have a fresh coffee ice cream recipe that you can try. Whether it's with or without roulade doesn't matter. Good ice cream is great on its own or with other food - makes no difference - not to me anyway!

Coffee is a fascinating subject - I even have a coffee history page where you can read about the East African shepherd that many people believe was the first to make a coffee drink.

Fresh Coffee & Coffee Ice Cream

A cup of freshly ground coffee can make the world of difference to your day. It can perk you up and lift your spirits like nothing else. There again ice cream, especially freshly homemade ice cream, can do pretty much the same thing; but have you ever put the two things together? Well I have and fresh coffee ice cream is a winner!

The key to the success of the recipe lies in one thing – using a good quality, freshly ground coffee. The better the coffee the better the ice cream will taste. There are many types of coffee to choose from of course; I tend to go for Costa Rica coffee. Costa Rica started producing coffee beans in the 1790’s and within 30 years was exporting its coffee to Columbia and Chile. Exports further afield followed with shipping consignments of Costa Rican coffee beans going directly to London by the 1850’s. The history of Costa Rican Coffee is fascinating and the link provides a lot more information if you’re interested. There are also lots of coffee suppliers online supplying quality coffees - from caffeinated to decaffeinated and all different kinds of roasts. Check out the Coffee Section in the Ice Cream Recipes Online Store.

Whilst reading up on coffee I came across a great website about coffee pots – real ‘larger than life’ ones that you can actually drive to see for yourself. There’s a coffee pot shaped night club, a coffee pot shaped gas station and even a water tower coffee pot. Some really interesting photos!