Iced coffee recipes

Prepare these delicious iced coffee recipes, so you’ll know how to make strong coffee and enjoy Vietnamese or Thai iced coffee and easy coffee ice cream.

When you don’t want your drink to become diluted, due to the melting ice cubes: you could replace water with coffee and make coffee cubes. Start with making a strong coffee, let it cool down to room temperature, fill your ice cube tray with the cold coffee and freeze.

Having said this, all the delicious iced coffees I have bought so far in Malaysia: all of them use normal ice but start with a strong coffee. Since the coffee cubes above and all recipes below mention a strong brew, lets give you some alternatives:

How to make strong coffee

• use an espresso machine or a much cheaper coffee percolator
• when using a kettle and coffee filter, you could opt for 1 or all of the following:
• add 50% more coffee than usual,
• add a bit of cocoa powder at the bottom of the filter: this will slow down the drip,
• add roasted chicory to your grinded coffee: roasted chicory used to be a coffee substitute during the second world war and gives a more bitter brew,
• or: once your coffee is made, bring it to a boil and use it with a new filter filled with newly grinded coffee, and let your coffee drip a second time
• use instant coffee: more than usual or add extra instant coffee in your normal brew

Thai iced coffee recipe

Apart from coffee, milk and sugar, the Thai add some spices in their coffee. When you want to drink this drink like it is served in Thailand, then add more sugar and milk. Personally I try to go easy on added sugar and make do the extra added “sweetness” given by the cardamoms.

Ingredients:

• 5 fluid ounce (150 ml) strong coffee (or 150 ml boiled water + 2 teaspoons Nescafe instant coffee)
• 5 + 1/4th ounce (150 gr) ice-cubes
• 3 cardamom pods with seeds
• 1.5 fluid ounce (45 ml) evaporated milk
• 0.175 ounce (5 gr) (1 full heaped teaspoon) gula melaka (palmsugar)

How to make Thai ice coffee at home

1. With a mortar (or any other heavy object): open the cardamom pods.
2. Brew a strong cup of coffee, add the cardamom and infuse for 15 minutes.
3. Add the sugar: stir until the sugar is diluted.
4. Put ice cubes in a glass.
5. Poor in the evaporated milk.
6. Poor in the coffee (I don’t bother to discard the cardamom, but you can easily use a small sieve when pouring your coffee into your glass)
7. Your Thai iced coffee is ready to serve

Vietnamese iced coffee recipe

When you have 15 minutes of patience and you are nostalgic about the coffee you drank in Vietnam…get your authentic Vietnamese coffee maker and you are set to go… Your coffee will take about 10 minutes to drip through… which is great if you just want to relax and unwind, enjoying the sound and smell of freshly brewing coffee.

You don’t need to travel all the way to Vietnam to import their authentic stainless steel looking coffee makers – although cheap (I bought mine for about 1USD). They do sell copy-cat coffee makers in any decent household shop. In Malaysia, I found one in the Japanese supermarket Isetan: in glass (the cup) with plastic (the drip and filter), it looks like in the picture on the right.

Ingredients:

• 3 tablespoons dark roast coffee
• 3 tablespoons sweetened condensed milk
• a few ice cubes

How to make authentic Vietnamese iced coffee:

1. Put the sweetened condensed milk in a cup and add ice.
2. Put the dark roast coffee in a Vietnamese coffee maker.
3. Add water that just comes off the boil (for half a cup if you don’t want to monitor when your cup will overflow due to the extra ice in your cup.) If you have a real Vietnamese coffee maker, screw to adjust the lid over the coffee until you see bubbles appearing through the water. At this point your coffee starts to drip very, very slow in your cup, which for me is still the charm of Vietnamese coffee!
4. When your cup is filled with dripped coffee, give it a stir and enjoy!

How to make a similar iced coffee without the authentic drip

• Poor sweetened condensed milk in a cup,
• add ice cubes and
• poor a cup of espresso over it.

And if you want it easier still: look for a Vietnamese restaurant in your neighborhood and order a coffee there:

I drank this Vietnamese coffee in the Vietnamese restaurant at the entrance of Bangsar Village 1, Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. (The little white pot contains thick, sweetened condensed milk).

Malaysian Kopi Ais or Kopi Ping

Malaysia is also known for roasting its own coffee beans. Being still an affordable country to live in, just order yourself a "kopi ais" (or a "kopi ping" when you are in a Chinese coffee shop), and this is what you will get:

It will cost you about 10 times less than a Starbucks coffee and depending which outlet you visit: your cheap coffee will even taste better than in some branded coffee outlets.

Like anything else you eat in Malaysia, you can also take away your drinks: just add "tapau" after your order and it will be poured in a plastic bag like so:

Every coffee shop in Malaysia will have their own recipe, making each ice coffee drink tasting differently. You can even specify your taste preference: "kopi ping kau" will give you a drink with a stronger coffee taste.

The ingredients of a Malaysian coffee ice consist of:

• freshly brewed warm coffee
• ice
• sweet condensed milk and
• evaporated milk.

Easy coffee ice cream recipe

Ever got unexpected visitors over on a hot sunny day? Everybody is in the mood for some ice cream yet you don’t have any in your freezer? Then this Baileys smoothie will come to your rescue: add enough ice until you have some kind of soft ice consistency. I didn’t take the time to write down the measurements but it went like this:

• take a small serving glass (those small glasses from Ikea) and fill with ice cubes
• poor in a nice amount of Baileys Irish cream liquor, the coffee variant
• poor in some full milk
• poor everything in a strong, small blender en mix until smooth
• scoop everything back into the small glass
• serve this soft ice with a spoon.

Please leave a comment and share your best iced coffee recipe!