Try An Ice Cream Coffee Or “Eiskaffee” For A Sweet Summer Drink/Treat!
If you want a sweet and delicious treat that is also a drink – and you love coffee – then an ice cream coffee is definitely for you.
Made with cold coffee and scoops of vanilla ice cream, this drink is a classic German summer staple that you would get at a café or an ice cream parlor.
While this is a classic German café drink, it most likely originates from the Italian dessert “Affogato al caffè”.
This makes sense since there are many cafés and ice cream parlors in Germany run by people who (or whose parents) immigrated from Italy during the second half of the 20th century.
Lisa has many great memories sitting in cafes with family or friends in different German cities sipping on this drink!
There are few better things than enjoying an ice cream coffee or “Eiskaffee” in German old towns and watching the people pass you by.
The good thing is that it is also super easy to make at home and a great way to bring those classic summer vibes into your home!
Traditionally, when you see ice cream coffee in public, it is served in a tall glass. We, unfortunately, don’t have a tall glass for an ice cream sundae so we just used shorter ones and a mason-type jar. It worked perfectly fine, too!
To enjoy ice cream coffee, you typically drink the coffee (sometimes with a straw) and then eat the ice cream with a spoon. Of course, there is no “right way” to eat/drink it – as long as you enjoy it.
If you want to make this drink for the kids, you can make an “Eisschokolade” and use cool “hot chocolate” instead of coffee.
On the other hand, if you want more of an adult version, you can add egg nog or even Baileys Irish Cream either to the coffee or as a drizzle on top of the whipped cream!
Related Recipes
If you’re searching for more German drinks, here are a few classics you may want to try next:
- Kinderpunsch – A German sweet punch served warm when it’s cold out
- Apfelschrole (German Apple Spritzer)
- German Mulled Wine (Glühwein)
- Eierpunsch (German Egg Punch)
Ice Cream Coffee (German Eiskaffee)
Ingredients
- black coffee
- 2 scoops vanilla ice cream
- whipped cream, to garnish
- chocolate shavings/sprinkles or cocoa powder, to garnish; optional
Instructions
- Make enough black coffee for the glass you want to use. After brewing, let the coffee cool completely. A quick way to do this is to pour the hot coffee into a bowl and then fill your kitchen sink with very cold water and place the bowl full of coffee in the sink. Your coffee should be cold enough in around 15 minutes.
- If you make your own whipped cream (and don’t use a bottle of whipping cream), you can use this "coffee cooling time" to whip the cream with an electric hand mixer.
- Add two scoops of vanilla ice cream into your glass and fill up the rest of the glass with cold coffee. Top it off with whipped cream (as much as you like!). You can then garnish it with chocolate sprinkles or shaved chocolate (take a bar of dark chocolate and grate it on a kitchen grater). You can even sprinkle on a bit of cocoa powder (optional).
Notes
- Traditionally Eiskaffee is served in a tall glass but any other glass works fine as well (we didn’t have a tall glass available so we used different ones). In that case, you might have to adjust the amount of coffee and/or ice cream you are using.
- If you want a slightly less heavy version of this cold coffee drink, you can always reduce the amount of ice cream and/or whipped cream.
Nutrition
This nutritional information has been estimated by an online nutrition calculator. It should only be seen as a rough calculation and not a replacement for professional dietary advice.
