Recipe: Dalgona matcha & dalgona coffee matcha

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By now, even if you haven’t tried it yourself, you at least have heard of “dalgona coffee.” It’s the super instagrammable layered drink featuring milk on the bottom and a coffee whipped cream on top.

“Dalgona” actually means “honeycomb toffee” in Korean — an old-school street food snack. Unlike caramel, which is just sweet, dalgona has a bitter finish. Cafes in Korea started crumbling the candy atop milk tea drinks, as it made the perfect pairing. Then in January, Korean actor Jung Il-Woo posted about a version of it, which he said tasted like burnt sugar candy from his childhood, and the internet went wild. The coffee gets more and more new versions of it, and “dalgona” has taken on a new meaning to Western consumers as a reference to the layered whipped coffee (or just the layered whip).

So now we’ve moved on to make other instagrammable whipped drinks. Many of my friends love matcha; I’m not much of a fan. But I do know that it’s good for you, and it’s got caffeine, so I thought I’d try to make a dalgona matcha!

Zulay Kitchen sent me their top-selling milk frother, which is normally used for lattes, and their culinary grade matcha powder.

This took me a while to get the recipe right. There are many versions on the internet, but some are too complicated, some didn’t whip well enough, some were too rich, and more often, many didn’t have enough matcha flavor. Even I could tell that! So here’s a dalgona matcha recipe that worked for me, that our company matcha lover Chantel Ikehara found delicious. And to be super honest, I liked it, too!

Ingredients
1 cup cold heavy whipping cream
1/4 cup sugar
2 Tbsp Zulay Kitchen matcha powder
milk of choice (I prefer almond milk so it’s not too rich)

Place the cream, sugar, and matcha in a bowl. Whip with a Zulay hand frother until the cream forms soft peaks. Be careful not to over whip or you’ll get whipped cream instead of soft dalgona matcha cream.

Fill two glasses with ice and pour in your milk of choice. Top the glasses with a generous amount of fluffy matcha. Stir well and enjoy!

I am actually more of a coffee drinker, but I wanted to see if I could get more caffeine into my cup of dalgona coffee. I made this non-dairy version and it was perfectly light and so easy to drink, I had two. Use the Zulay handheld milk frother to get this whipped up in minutes.

Dalgona coffee with matcha
Coffee foam:
2 tablespoons hot water
1 tablespoon instant coffee
1 tablespoon sugar

Matcha
2 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon Zulay matcha powder
1 cup ice
1/3 cup milk

Combine instant coffee, sugar, and hot water in a tall container and whip with a handheld milk frother until soft, airy peaks form. The nice thing about this is that you can leave it on the side and whip it back to life if you need to.
Combine matcha, sugar, and water and whip together.
Rinse the handheld milk frother and use it to mix until you don’t see any matcha clumps.
Pour the sweetened matcha into a cup.
Add ice slowly to prevent the matcha from splashing the glass.
Slowly pour milk directly on top of the ice to keep the layers separated.
Spoon dalgona coffee foam on top.
Stir well and enjoy!

Both these drinks were refreshing, and I’ll probably be drinking that layered matcha and coffee at the office regularly! Even if Zulay Kitchen had not sent me the products to try, I probably would have bought them at some point. But at least now, I’m a matcha convert, and can enjoy its health benefits deliciously. Be watching this blog, as I will be making matcha shortbread cookies for Chantel soon!

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