I drank my first real coffee in Italy. It was back in 1979, I was 15, in Milan on my own, sitting in the grand apartment of Anna Piaggi and Vern Lambert in Via San Martino. Books and beautiful objects seemed to fill every shelf and table, and watercolour illustrations by Antonio Lopez were set out on Anna’s dining room table. And on a tray tucked close to the edge of the table were tiny cups of espresso.
Now up to this point I’d only dabbled at coffee drinking. Back in Melbourne, Mum had her small jar of Nescafe, and sometimes I’d put a quarter teaspoon in a cup with lots of milk and boiling water, which turned the milk beige, and the flavour slightly caramel. I still enjoy Nescafe but I don’t think of it as coffee.
So when Vern asked, “you do drink coffee, don’t you?” I said yes. Thinking that the appearance of confidence would hide the fact that I was young and unsophisticated. And I worried that if I said no I wouldn’t get the chance to drink it again, ever. The first mouthful, after saying no to sugar, was the most extreme thing I’d ever swallowed. I crossed a line into gastronomic adulthood, and there was no turning back.
Alongside chocolate and vanilla, coffee is one of the central flavours used by pastry chefs and home cooks when they want an all-round winner that few will object to. In England, the coffee and walnut cake made by stirring instant coffee powder or the chicory-based Camp Coffee into the cake batter has become the definitive cake to expect in National Trust tea-rooms. In the US I think about coffee icing on donuts, or drizzled over the top of a mocha chocolate muffin. In France I think of Religieuses au Café or a simple coffee eclair. In Australia we had coffee scrolls, much like cinnamon buns with a sweet coffee fondant spooned over the top. But for all of these, the coffee element was a little cheap and cheerful, more about a beige colour and a little bitterness to offset the sugary sweetness.
So what about ramping the coffee flavour up a little, so that it matches some of the intensity of a good espresso? I wondered what the best bold-flavoured coffees were, ones that could withstand abuse from other flavour-contorting substances. Sugar softens the bitterness and causes some coffees to lose their edge. Spices can mask any inherent natural spiciness the bean has. And when the coffee is infused into a hot cup of liquid, how do you then keep the flavour?
For all my love of coffee, I really don’t understand the nuances of the varieties available, so I asked Daniel Young at youngandfoodish.com whose book Coffee Love (Wiley, 2009) looks at recipes and flavours from a globe-hopping vantage point.
The first trick, according to Daniel Young, is to know where your coffee bean originates. “Basically there are three coffee producing regions,” says Daniel, “that cover a large area around the world. You have the Americas, including South and Central America. Then you have East Africa. And finally Asia and Pacific.”
“The South Asian coffees tend to be the biggest bodied and most intense. But I would actually think more about the character of the coffee and how it’s roasted to decide how it’s going to hold up and marry. Bitterness and acidity are general characteristics, but I think aroma and flavour are very important for pastry chefs and I find that the coffees they go for do display vivid aroma and flavour characteristics.”
“For example”, says Daniel, “if you look at Brazil – and don’t mind if I’m very general about this (as flavours can vary even from farm to farm) – you often find Brazilian coffee has a clear chocolately note to the flavour and would marry well with chocolate. There’s a Brazilian coffee called Fazenda Rainha that has a sweet chocolate character, while in coffees like the Finca La Fany (from El Salvador) or the Finca San Francisco (from Guatemala) you generally get less bitterness and a flavour with some notes of milk chocolate and caramel to it. Then you might even detect a citrus element that cuts through that caramel, and a toffee sweetness. The El Salvador coffees can have notes of cherries or sweet oranges naturally occurring, like in the Finca Los Planes – the inherent flavours are perfect “little recipes” within the bean.”
“Now you can’t just go to the supermarket to buy these coffees,” says Daniel, “but that’s part of the adventure. In the UK there is an online supplier called Hasbean.co.uk that has a great selection available, or squaremilecoffee.com or Monmouth Coffee’s stores.”
Getting every last drop of flavour
No matter what coffee you use, getting the most flavour from it is important. So when you start playing with expensive estate beans then you start to want your money’s worth.
1. Instant coffee
When I want a simple and slight caramel coffee flavour to an icing on a cake, dissolving a tablespoon of instant coffee in the same amount of hot water does the trick. Especially if I’m mixing it with some finely grated lemon zest or cinnamon.
Good for: simple coffee cookies, basic water icing, wherever a background coffee flavour is needed
2. Freshly ground coffee
My rule is that if the cake, cookie or biscuit has a slightly rough and coarse texture, then you can directly add ground coffee to the mixture. So if the cake has ground walnuts through it, or flakes of bran, or semolina or ground rice: go for it. But if the mixture is soft and evenly textured then coffee grounds will destroy that delicacy. Having said that, I really like adding coffee grounds to a cake mix.
Good for: coarse-textured cakes or cookies, or when the varied ingredients disguise exactly what is in the mixture.
3. Intense espresso coffee
By espresso I mean an almost viscous cup of about 30ml of intense coffee ‘resin’ made from ground coffee, not a spoonful of anything instant labelled “espresso”. The trick here is to use it in place of water or milk in a recipe, or I use it in place of one of the egg whites in a two-egg cake mixture. You can make a syrup with it just by stirring in a little caster sugar, or even add Marsala for a tiramisu edge.
Good for: making into a syrup and brushing on the layers of a cake, or pouring over the well-skewered top of a cake.
Note: Daniel Young told me about cold-infusing coffee, by simply leaving the grounds in room-temperature water or milk for 24 hours then straining and pressing the liquid through muslin. Very curious to try this, and will report back how it goes.
4. Filter coffee
Usually there is too much water in filter coffee for it to be much use, except when it comes to bread baking. Here, all that water is perfect, especially if you want a slight hint of coffee to a raisin bread recipe, or in a chocolate-flavoured yeast dough. If you replace the water for milk in a cafetière you could use that as well.
Good for: any recipe where water or liquid makes up a large proportion of the ingredients.
