Coffee around the World: Affogato
Coffee is often offered as an after-meal accompaniment, sometimes after a dessert, and even as an alternative.
Simplicity is often king in our food, a simple classic almost all of the time, coffee deserves more time in your foods.
Well what if we combined coffee and our dessert in the most simple way possible? Let’s say ice cream and espresso?
That’ll be an Affogato.
We can’t really think of many other recipes that are quite this easy or rewarding.
Classic Italian coffee engineering in a dessert form. Simple yet incredibly effective, you’ll wonder why all things in life can’t be this easy and rewarding.
Affogato literally means “drowned” in Italian, which is all that you end up doing, drowning your ice cream (or gelato) in espresso.
The combination of hot and cold in one mix makes for an intense dessert experience that is not common enough for our liking.
What actually makes an Affogato?
All it takes is a scoop of ice cream and a shot (or two) of espresso.
Simply pour the espresso over the ice cream and enjoy.
It’s the effortless that makes this such a great dessert for coffee lovers.
Despite being incredibly easy to make and enjoy, we must warn you of some of the pitfalls of the Affogato, but there are also quite a few options to experiment without ruining the overall experience.
The dessert can be a little too plain for some, and yes we do agree, it is rather ‘plain’ according to some palates.
Ensure you have quality ice cream, quality vanilla is the best in complimenting the rich espresso tastes, we recommend an ice cream with high milk content. With a high milk content, it creates an ice cream latte hybrid that is incredibly refreshing.
If you feel like adding some texture, then you could try adding roasted almonds, hazelnuts, amaretti or crushed biscotti to add a light crunch without overpowering the dish.
One more thing. Please NEVER use instant coffee to make an affogato. Unfortunately the freeze dried stuff just doesn’t have the flavour depth needed to cope with the intense ice cream. Proper espresso or not at all.
Enjoy this Italian classic after a meal and see why we think it’s such a big deal.
It makes for a great Instagram pic, especially with the contrast between light white ice cream and dark rich espresso.