Dalgona Coffee Recipe

If you’ve been on the internet at any point in the last few months, we reckon there’s a pretty strong chance that you’ve come across the Dalgona iced whipped coffee.

This cold whipped delicacy has turned out, fascinatingly, to be a bit of a lockdown sensation. While we’ve all been a bit stuck at home, sure, a lot of us have tried our hands at a spot of baking. This general trend then led to a coffee home brewing revolution, as the Dalgona coffee recipe was born and spread rapidly across the world. It just goes to show, you can’t predict what’s going to be the next big thing.

The Dalgona iced coffee is a cold thick sweet creamy drink that is, basically, made by combining the ingredients of a standard sweet-toother’s coffee, and then whipping it like there’s no tomorrow. All you need is instant coffee, sugar and water and an electric mixer. Mix the coffee, sugar and hot water and whisk till the mixture is super aerated. Then add the coffee mix to a glass of cold milk, giving it its iconic layers. It’s certainly a drink for those who don’t mind a bit of sweet.

The Dalgona trend started out in South Korea (it was, allegedly, named after a South Korean coffee-flavoured sweet), then it spread to the rest of the world through TikTok tutorials.

We’ve been fascinated by the global popularity of this alt coffee drink, so we’d be remiss not to provide our take on the trend. Our only issue with what looks to be a rather delicious iced coffee, is that it is a strictly instant-only beverage (this is to do with the science behind the desired characteristic ‘whipped’ effect).

We wanted to take the key elements of a Dalgona (i.e. its key ingredients and its thick, sweet and creamy properties) and provide our take on this latest trend to hit the coffee world.

Our aim is to provide a recipe for this latest lockdown trend, without forcing you to compromise your love of quality coffee with a cheap instant variety. There is no reason not to use great coffee to make this recipe and we think our coffee blends are perfect for this as they cut through the milk and sugar really well.:

Our Dalgona Recipe:

Equipment:

A blender or NutriBullet

Ingredients:

• About 40 grams of espresso. If you don't make espresso at home you can make a strong coffee concentrate using an Aeropress. Use about 100ml.
• 2 hearty scoops of vanilla ice cream
• 200ml of cold milk
• A handful of iced cubes
• Brown sugar

Method:

It’s quite simple really - blitz together the coffee, ice cream and sugar. Try to aerate the mixture.

Put the ice cubes in a glass big enough to hold about 350ml and add the cold milk. Now carefully spoon the whipped coffee mixture on top of the ice cubes. If you do this carefully and there is enough air in the mix this should sit ontop fo the milk creating the dalgona coffee layered look.

Other elements that you could add to possibly take it up a notch are cocoa powder (for a mocha), baileys, vanilla essence, different flavours of ice cream, maple syrup or honey instead of salted caramel, you name it. 

We know it might not be for all of our speciality coffee fans (you try suggesting to my mum that she has milk in her coffee), but if your two favourite things happen to be coffee and desserts, we wanted to follow the hype and provide a speciality alternative for all of our sweet-toothed customers. We've tested this dalgona coffee recipe out extensively using espresso made on our La Marzocco Linea Mini and it really does work very well! It also tastes much better than using any form of instant coffee.

It also works very well using vegan ingredients. Just use vegan ice cream and any form of plant-based milk although we found that almond and coconut milks tend to taste the best.