Affogato Recipe: The 2-Ingredient Italian Coffee Dessert

An affogato is gelato drowned in a shot of hot espresso. illy's recipe in its own numbers, America's Test Kitchen's with optional liqueur, and how much espresso, gelato and caffeine go in.

By Jay Arr Updated

An affogato is two things, gelato and espresso, and the details change with the recipe: how much of each, whether there’s cream on top, and how hot the coffee is when it goes in. This page sets out two published recipes in their own numbers, where they differ, and what to use if you don’t have an espresso machine.

What the name means

Affogato is the past participle of the Italian verb affogare, to drown. The Treccani dictionary gives the dessert as one of its uses: gelato affogato, gelato served in a dessert cup and covered in liqueur, coffee or something else. The coffee version is affogato al caffè.

Where it began isn’t settled. De’Longhi, the Italian coffee-machine maker, writes that the affogato’s origins aren’t officially documented, and calls it an Italian creation, probably born in the bars and gelaterie of the 1950s and 1960s.

illy’s affogato, for one

illy, the Italian coffee company, publishes this recipe in Italian for one serving. It keeps the espresso and gelato in a fixed proportion: 20–25 ml of espresso for every 40 g of gelato.

  1. Pull a single shot of espresso, 20–25 ml, into an espresso cup.
  2. Put 40 g of gelato in a glass and pour the hot espresso over it.
  3. Whip the cream and spoon as much as you like on top.
  4. Dust with cocoa and serve straight away.

illy’s own warnings: don’t pour the espresso cold or lukewarm, because its heat is what melts the gelato a little and makes the hot-and-cold contrast; don’t wait before serving, or the gelato melts completely; and dust the cocoa on at the last moment, or it goes damp.

Two ingredients, or four. Leave out the cream and cocoa and you have the plain version in Treccani’s definition, which is the one America’s Test Kitchen makes below.

Scaling it. illy says to keep the proportion when you make more. A double shot from our Brew Guide is 36 g, a little less than two of illy’s shots, so in illy’s proportion it goes with about 60–70 g of gelato (calculated, counting a gram of espresso as about a milliliter).

America’s Test Kitchen’s affogato, for four

America’s Test Kitchen published its version on June 29, 2009. It uses ice cream and serves everything at the table:

  1. Scoop the ice cream into individual bowls or parfait glasses, about ½ cup each.
  2. Bring them to the table with the espresso, and the liqueur if you’re using it, in small cups or shot glasses.
  3. Let each person pour the espresso, and the liqueur if they like, over the ice cream, and eat it straight away.

A 2-ounce serving of espresso is bigger than illy’s single shot, and bigger than our Brew Guide’s 36 g double.

Hot from the machine, or rested a minute?

The two Italian sources disagree here. illy says to serve the espresso at once, still hot, because the temperature contrast with the cold gelato is the point. De’Longhi says to let the coffee rest about a minute after brewing, so it’s hot but not boiling-hot, which it says keeps the contrast without melting the gelato at once. Try it both ways. Either way, once the espresso is on the gelato, serve it straight away; both recipes say so.

Gelato or ice cream

illy and De’Longhi use gelato, and America’s Test Kitchen uses ice cream. Either works. In the US, the label won’t tell you as much about gelato as it does about ice cream. Federal rules (21 CFR Part 135) set standards for ice cream and frozen custard, goat’s milk ice cream, mellorine, sherbet and water ices, but not for gelato. The ice-cream standard generally requires at least 10 percent milkfat and a weight of at least 4.5 pounds per gallon, with a milkfat exception for bulky flavor ingredients. Part 135 has no separate standard named gelato.

A gallon’s weight depends mostly on how much air is churned in, which ice cream makers call overrun. America’s Test Kitchen suggests a high-butterfat ice cream with low overrun, meaning less air, for a creamier affogato. USDA’s figures show how much a scoop can vary: half a cup of its regular vanilla ice cream weighs 66 g, and half a cup of its “rich” vanilla 107 g. Weighing the gelato, as illy does, gets around that: 40 g is about a third of a cup of the regular kind (calculated).

Flavors

De’Longhi starts with vanilla gelato and suggests fiordilatte or crema instead: neutral flavors, it says, that bring out the coffee without covering it. For a richer version it suggests hazelnut or chocolate, and its own recipe adds a few frozen berries to the glass.

With liqueur

Treccani’s definition already includes gelato drowned in liqueur. America’s Test Kitchen offers 1 ounce (about 30 ml) of coffee liqueur, Armagnac or cognac for each serving, poured over the ice cream with the espresso. It’s optional, and the affogato is just as much an affogato without it.

No espresso machine

Other versions

Caffeine

If you serve an affogato after dinner, the caffeine counts. Our Caffeine Calculator puts a single shot of espresso, as in illy’s recipe, at 60–75 mg, and a double at 120–150 mg. Our caffeine guide has the figures for other drinks.

Sources

Share