Unless you have been living under a WiFi-less rock, you would have heard of dalgona coffee, the homemade drink that is taking social media by storm. It’s named after the popular old-school Korean street snack dalgona (a caramelised sugar and baking soda candy that’s also known as ‘honeycomb toffee’), and looks like an ombré frappe with frothy, creamy coffee-flavoured foam layered on top of fresh milk.

Despite its name, dalgona coffee doesn’t actually contain dalgona. The drink is made with a few simple ingredients that most people would have at home — instant coffee powder, sugar and hot water mixed in equal parts. The mixture is then whipped rapidly till it has the consistency of meringue-like frothy ‘clouds’ to create an Insta-worthy beverage for soothing cafe-hopping withdrawal symptoms.

The dalgona coffee trend recently exploded on Instagram and YouTube, when Korean netizens who were homebound due to Covid-19 tried making the beverage as a #dalgonacoffeechallenge (similar drinks, however, can be found in Greece and India where it’s considered a mundanely common traditional beverage). You may have even watched videos of chirpy Instagrammers scooping dollops of golden-brown coffee cream like it was manna from heaven.

Dalgona coffee became so insanely viral simply ’cos it looks ridiculously easy to make — just mix its three ingredients and serve it with milk, right?

Wrong.

I confidently set out to make the drink after a quick glance at the many YouTube recipes floating around online. I had two tablespoons each of instant coffee powder, refined white sugar and water, and an extensive Milo-making resume to back up my mixing skills, which is pretty much all the recipe vaguely calls for. The portions make enough dalgona foam for one glass of milk, about 150ml.

Instead of 3-in-1 coffee sachets, I decided to use ground coffee powder, which some YouTubers had also used, so the cream wouldn’t be too sweet. I dribbled two tablespoonfuls of tepid water into the coffee-and-sugar dry mix, which I had dumped into a small cup, and got to whisking with a $2 battery-operated hand mixer from Daiso (austere times, guys).

After watching even more YouTube tutorials and reading the comments of people wailing about their failed dalgona coffee, I started to understand why my first attempt was a disaster. And here are the important things to take note of before you start making the coffee:

1) Two sachets of 3-in-1 instant coffee powder work better than two tablespoons of ground coffee powder. Your mileage may vary, but I find that 3-in-1 coffee has finer granules, which melt more easily in hot water. You can also substitute coffee with Milo powder, matcha powder or instant milk tea powder in the same ratio.

2) Make sure the water you use is boiling hot in order for it to properly melt the coffee powder and sugar mix. This will make your job of whisking faster, and most importantly, successful. Add the water slowly, adjusting the amount till you get a thick paste that can be stirred easily. I added a bit more than the stipulated two tablespoonfuls in the recipe. You want a smooth slurry, not muah chee dough.

3) Don’t be stingy with the sugar. When it comes to our Infinity War on diabetes, dalgona coffee is the new Thanos. It’s loaded with sugar, but it’s not just for taste. Just like in baking, sugar is an essential ingredient for giving the dalgona foam structure. The granules create little air bubbles in the mixture to fluff it up, then dissolve into a sugary syrup that holds up the foam (see photo above). So try this once for the ’gram, but it ain’t a great idea to drink it every day.

With that, I attempted to make dalgona coffee a second time (the Daiso mixer, to its reluctance, was put back to work). To my delight, the foam started to take shape within five minutes this time, though it’s not YouTube video-smooth ’cos I only had coarse white sugar in the house that was hard to melt (a high-power electric mixer will also yield smoother foam, so use that if you have it).

You can stop whisking once the mixture is goopy enough to plop down and hold its own shape (see photo), and looks like peanut butter. I added it to a glass of cold milk — the foam will sink right to the bottom if you use warm milk — and marvelled at the chio ombré layers. The hard work was worth it.

I scooped up a big heap of dalgona foam to taste, and was blown away… by the sweetness and the punch-you-in-the-face, crazily caffeinated coffee flavour from two whole sachets of instant coffee. But it’s also strangely tasty, like fluffy, strong coffee-spiked cream. When mixed with milk, the concoction tastes like a much thicker, decadent version of caramel caffe latte. Dangerously addictive. And maybe, it tastes so good because I had to work for it.

PHOTOS: YIP JIEYING