Wondering how to make dalgona without instant coffee? It’s actually pretty easy to make using a combination of normal coffee and aquafaba, the liquid from canned chickpeas. Read on to see how to make this trendy Korean whipped coffee (without instant coffee!) and see what the fuss is all about.
Have you noticed that lately there’s a whipped coffee taking the internet by storm? It’s called Dalgona and it’s a fun whipped coffee drink from Korea that’s usually made with only four ingredients:
- Instant coffee
- Sugar
- Hot water
- Milk
I’ve been seeing dalgona all over TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, everywhere. So I finally had to make some myself.
Only one problem – I don’t drink instant coffee, which is what you need to make the frothy whipped coffee that sits over the milk.
Well, I knew there had to be a cool way to make dalgona coffee without instant coffee – and make it vegan, of course! As one of my favorite YouTubers stated, “Why inconvenience a cow if you don’t need to? And you never need to.”
So I made my dalgona with soy milk, but you can use whatever plant-based milk you enjoy the most. Almond milk or oat milk would work great, too!
The key to making the fluffy whipped coffee topping was using aquafaba – the liquid from a can of beans. Got a can of chickpeas or black beans? You have aquafaba waiting to be whipped! You can see how to make aquafaba from dry beans here.
Is Dalgona Without Instant Coffee Good?
After making Dalgona with regular coffee, I started organizing my coffee cupboard and voila! – I discovered that I did, in fact, have some instant coffee in my possession after all. I had bought it for when we went camping one time and completely forgot it was there.
So, I also made dalgona with instant coffee, using the standard method of dissolving the instant coffee crystals in hot water, then adding the sugar and whipping it into a thick froth.
Taste-wise, in my opinion, I prefer dalgona WITHOUT instant coffee. The instant coffee gives a caramel color, but it also has a really strong taste. It tasted a little artificial to me. So I prefer the taste of the dalgona made with regular coffee and aquafaba whipped together.
It’s lighter colored and doesn’t whip up quite as thickly, but the milder taste was much more enjoyable in my opinion. So yes, I’d say dalgona made with normal coffee is good! I hope you like it too.
Other vegan recipes you may like
Ingredients
- 2 Tbsp aquafaba
- 3 Tbsp strong coffee
- 4 Tbsp sugar
- soy milk (or milk replacement of choice)
Instructions
- Dissolve the sugar in the coffee and set aside.
- Whip the aquafaba with an electric mixer until foamy (about 3-4 minutes).
- With the mixer running, slowly add in the coffee & sugar mixture.
- Pour your plant based milk of choice into a cup, 3/4 full. Spoon the whipped coffee mixture on to the surface of the milk.
