Coconut Coffee
Cà phê cốt dừaka fey coht zuh-uh
A spoonable coconut slush under a slick of dark robusta, somewhere between iced coffee and a dessert. It holds its frozen texture because coconut fat sets solid in the cold, which is also why you cannot make it with coconut milk.
At a glance
- Coffee : coconut base
- 1:3
- Active time
- 5 min
- Total time
- 10 min
- Makes
- 1 glass
- Serve
- Frozen, with a spoon
- Kit
- Phin + blender
Ingredients
Note: Coconut milk will not work here. It is coconut cream diluted with water, and the extra water freezes into hard ice crystals instead of a soft slush.
Method
-
Brew the coffee first
Phin the coffee straight into a small jug: bloom with 20 ml for thirty seconds, then the rest of the water, four to five minutes of dripping.
Let it sit while you make the slush. It should be warm, not hot, when it goes on, or it melts a hole straight through.
Drip 4 to 5 minutes -
Chill the glass
Put the serving glass in the freezer for ten minutes if you can. A room temperature glass melts the outside of the slush before you have taken a spoonful.
-
Blend the coconut base
Put the coconut cream, condensed milk, whole milk and ice in the blender and pulse, then run it until there are no chunks and it looks like soft snow. Twenty to thirty seconds.
Stop as soon as it is smooth. Running the blender longer warms it and the fat starts to soften.
Blend 20 to 30 seconds -
Fill the glass
Spoon the slush into the cold glass, leaving a couple of centimetres at the top. Press it down lightly so there are no air pockets for the coffee to pour into.
-
Pour the coffee over
Pour the warm coffee slowly over the top so it pools and runs down in streaks. Scatter the toasted coconut on if you are using it and serve with a spoon and a wide straw.
Eat the top, then stir the rest. The two halves taste different and both are the point.
Why this works
Coconut fat is mostly saturated, and lauric acid in particular, which melts at around 24°C. That is the reason a tin of coconut cream is solid at the top when it comes out of the fridge, and it is the whole trick of this drink. Blended with ice, the fat chills below its melting point and sets into a fine network around the ice crystals, so you get a soft, scoopable slush rather than ice floating in liquid.
Coconut milk ruins it because it is mostly water. Water freezes into separate hard crystals that the blender smashes into gravel, and there is not enough fat around them to hold anything together. Within five minutes it separates into icy shards and a thin, watery coconut puddle.
Condensed milk does more than sweeten. Dissolved sugar lowers the freezing point of the mixture, which keeps the slush soft enough to spoon rather than setting into a block, the same reason sorbet needs its sugar.
Robusta matters here as it does in every Vietnamese milk coffee. Under that much fat and sugar, an arabica becomes background. A dark robusta keeps the drink tasting of coffee.
The drink is closely associated with Cộng Cà Phê, the Hanoi chain founded in 2007, which made it the thing tourists queue for. Coconut and coffee were already being combined in southern Vietnam, where coconuts grow, but Cộng turned it into the frozen cafe version most people now mean.
Variations
- Hot coconut coffee: warm the coconut cream and condensed milk together, whisk, and pour the coffee in. Richer and much less common.
- Coconut cold foam: whip the coconut cream with the condensed milk and float it on cà phê sữa đá instead of blending.
- With a shot of espresso: if you have no phin, a double ristretto poured over works well, a little sharper.
- Vegan: replace the condensed milk with sweetened condensed coconut milk and the whole milk with more coconut cream.
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Questions
Can I use coconut milk instead of coconut cream?
No. Coconut milk is mostly water and freezes into hard ice crystals that separate within minutes. Coconut cream has enough fat to set into a soft slush around the ice.
What is Cộng Cà Phê coconut coffee?
It is this drink. Cộng is a Hanoi cafe chain, founded in 2007, whose frozen coconut coffee became its signature and the version most visitors to Vietnam know.
Can I make coconut coffee without a blender?
Freeze the coconut cream and condensed milk mixture in a shallow tray, then scrape it with a fork every half hour like a granita. It takes two hours and gives a flakier texture, but it works.
Why did my coconut coffee separate?
Either the cream was too thin, the blender ran too long and warmed it, or the glass was warm. Use cold coconut cream, blend only until smooth, and chill the glass.