Coffee Spanish Cream

“It’s creamy. Do you have more of the other coffee jelly?

Dedicated Taster

Coffee Spanish Cream                 
1 envelope unflavored gelatin
1 ½ cups strong coffee
2/3 cup sugar
2/3 cup dairy-free milk alternative
2 egg yolks
Pinch salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
Non-dairy whipped cream alternative

1. Soak the gelatin in one-half cup cold coffee for five minutes.
2. Using a double boiler, place on stove one cup coffee, two-thirds cup milk, egg yolks, and cook until thickened, stirring constantly.
3. Remove mixture from heat and add sugar, dissolved gelatin, vanilla and salt.
4. Divide into serving dishes and chill until set.
7. Serve with whipped cream.

Original Recipe                    
Charles B. Knox Co.’s Dainty Desserts for Dainty People, c. 1920

½ envelope Knox Sparkling Gelatine.
1 ½ cups strong coffee.
2/3 cup sugar.
2/3 cup milk.
2 eggs.
Pinch salt.
1 teaspoonful vanilla.

Soak the gelatine in one-half cup cold coffee five minutes. Place on stove one cup coffee, two-thirds cup milk and when boiling add yolks of eggs well beaten. Cook three minutes, then add sugar and dissolved gelatine and salt. When cool, stir in whites of eggs beaten to a stiff froth. Flavor with vanilla. Mold and serve with whipped cream.

Minute Café Parfait
Minute Tapioca Company’s Minute Gelatine Cook Book, 1926  
1 envelope Minute Gelatine
1 cup sugar
1 cup hot coffee
Yolks of 2 eggs (well-beaten)
1 pint whipped cream

Mix together Minute Gelatine and sugar and dissolve in hot coffee made the proper strength for drinking. Stir in the well-beaten yolks and cook in a double-broiler till it begins to thicken. Remove from fire and cool in ice-box. Just before serving stir in sweetened whipped cream into the cold custard.

Comments: Oofta. This is one of those recipes written by either a misguided novice or an accomplished cook for other accomplished cooks. My updated recipe is a simplified version that captures the texture, consistency, and flavor of the original.

There are several omissions in the original recipe that are critical to its success. You can’t add egg yolks to a boiling liquid – the result will always be a type of egg drop soup. Similarly, beaten egg whites will not combine easily with a liquid – they will float. Equally frustrating to the amateur cook are the methods used to successfully incorporate manipulated forms of a raw egg. To make this recipe more user-friendly, I chose to replace the whites with whipped cream and simplify the tempering process. (You can read more about tempering here.) These changes were inspired by the Minute Tapioca Company’s recipe above and by similar recipes in other cookbooks.

Overall, my tasters enjoyed this recipe, but they didn’t love it enough for me to make it again. They preferred instead the original coffee jelly, perhaps because of our Durgin-Park memories. Our frequent addition of ice cream to the original coffee jelly may also have been a deciding factor!

As for presentation, this is a lovely dessert that looks like a parfait. You may want to add a cherry just for fun! Where are my pictures, you ask? I didn’t take any! I forgot. It’s been a week.