In a medium saucepan, warm the milk, sugar, whole coffee beans, salt, and just 1/2 cup of the cream. Once the mixture is nicely warmed, cover and remove it from the heat. Let the mixture steep at room temperature for 1 hour.

Now warm up the coffee-infused milk mixture again. Pour the remaining 1 cup cream into a large bowl and set a mesh strainer on top. In a separate medium bowl, whisk the egg yolks. Then slowly pour the warmed coffee mixture into the egg yolks, whisking constantly. Scrape the warmed egg yolk/coffee mixture back into the saucepan.

Over medium heat, stir the mixture constantly with a heatproof spatula. Scrape the bottom as you stir, until the mixture thickens and coats the spatula. Pour the custard through the strainer, into the cream below it. Press on the coffee beans in the strainer, extracting as much of the coffee flavor as possible (I really enjoyed this part!!). Discard the beans. Mix in the vanilla and the ground coffee. Stir until cool over an ice bath. (Ice bath = simply fill a larger bowl with a good layer of ice and nestle the custard bowl on top of the ice, so the custard cools faster.)

Chill the mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator, then freeze it in your ice cream machine according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

This is the really fun part! And there really is no perfect formula. Simply add as much of the above ingredients as you like. To get the peanut butter’s consistency to “ribbon” over the ice cream, I put a large spoon of peanut butter into a small bowl and stirred it briskly to loosen it up.

I made individual sundaes, dressing each bowl of ice cream with these toppings. And I also just stirred a bunch of the remaining toppings into the last of the coffee ice cream, right in the freezer container. This super yummy concoction went straight into the freezer, and I had instant mud pie mojo ice cream waiting for me at my next craving!