Affogato

As is nearly always the case with Italian cuisine, simple is best. Few ingredients, bold flavours, a couple of contrasting textures, and you're onto a winner. That's the case with the Affogato - all that’s involved is drenching a couple of scoops of vanilla ice cream with a beautiful cup of strong, rich coffee (hence the name 'affogato', which means 'drowned') It’s the ultimate rule-of-opposites dish, made with deep, dark-roast espresso and simple white vanilla ice cream.

A couple of things to bear in mind

Making your Affogato as extra as you.

Now, we've said simplicity is key to this recipe - and it really is. But if you must, and we're really stressing the must here, add something extra, then follow some simple rules.

• Go for texture - the only other thing recipe could do with is a bit of crunch, so little additions like crumbled biscuit, nuts, wafers and chocolate are just about admissible. I mean, our photographer added a wafer to ours in the photo above before we could stop her and to be honest, after tasting it, we weren't as mad as we could have been. And it does look pretty cool.
• Compliment, don't transform - don't add another layer of flavour. choose stuff that compliments the dark, rich coffee and sweet, simple vanilla. Think malty, nutty flavours - and stay away from anything too sweet.

The Coffee

When a recipe's this simple, you need to make sure you're working with high quality ingredients, prepared just right. For the coffee, you need a well-roasted, full-bodied blend (we'd suggest our Dark Roast), as you really want something that cuts through the thick ice-cream.

The Ice Cream (or should we say gelato?)

For the ice cream, stick with vanilla. Just do it. It's the perfect accompaniment to the coffee, and going with anything else is just unnecessary. Also, pick high quality ice cream, preferably gelato if you can get it (which is pretty much ice cream made with a higher proportion of milk, and absolutely no eggs).

Our recipe was made with Remeo Gelato. All their flavours are made with 100% natural ingredients and they're all about using the smallest amount of high quality ingredients they can to make simple, delicious gelato. Again, simple is just better!

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