Check it out for yourself. You’ll be surprised how good this new drink is, especially if you are a coffee or cappuccino lover.
Cafe art was inspired by the success of Cafe Tasse and their “Decadent Dessert Truffle”. The drink is made not just for those with a sweet tooth but also to provide a fine tasting experience for those who prefer other flavors such as chocolate, vanilla, or caramel.
The cafe art drink comes in three flavors:
1. Cafe Mocha
2. Cafe Latte
3. Cafe Macchiato
Coffee experts have already given their seal of approval to the taste, texture and presentation of the new drink. If you haven’t tried it yet, here’s what you can expect:
You’re going to love it!
I’ve been waiting for this drink to be invented for years. It’s so good, I can hardly believe it exists.
The first time I tried it was at a small cafe in the East Village on Bowery and Second Avenue called Cafe Select. They make a bunch of drinks with egg whites, and this is the best one. They call it the Decadent Dessert Truffle. It’s coffee ice cream, espresso, and hot fudge sauce all mixed together — in other words: heaven in a glass.
We had already tasted a prototype of this drink, and it was strikingly good. But it tasted as though there were some kind of trick involved. The ingredients are simple, but there’s something about the way they work together that makes the drink taste extraordinary.
Tasting the final version, we were convinced: there’s no trick to how this dessert drink is made. It really is that good.
Truffles are a kind of fungus that grow underground in the roots of trees, and they have a reputation for being expensive. A few years ago, the restaurant Per Se served some black truffles shaved over a $400 hamburger. Decadence is the new trend in drinks: cafes are starting to serve $20 cocktails with ingredients like liquid nitrogen or gold leaf.
Dessert truffles are also decadent, but they’re made from chocolate, so they’re not as expensive. However, it’s difficult to find a good one. A lot of them are too sweet. The best one we’ve found so far is called Cafe Art at Art Cafe in Toronto.
This is not a traditional cafe; it’s more like an expensive bistro. The desserts are out on display in the center of the restaurant, and you order at the counter and get your own dessert and coffee or tea.
The barista made our dessert drink with coffee and chocolate syrup, although you can choose ice cream instead of syrup if you wish. When she handed us our drink she said “Enjoy,” which is not something most baristas say to customers who come in just to order dessert. This one was probably having a good day.
Our first reaction after trying
The drink, called Cafe Art, is the creation of a small Bay Area company called Sodas. Their website does not elucidate on exactly what it is that they do. Perhaps the best way to describe their business is as a kind of Willy Wonka: they are whimsical flavor chemists. The cafe art drink is just one product in their ever-expanding line of sodas that includes such drinks as Orange Vodka, Cherry Rum and Chocolate Coconut.
And while they seem to be doing quite well for themselves, they are relatively unknown outside the Bay Area which is why I’m writing about them here.
The first thing you’ll notice when you see Cafe Art described online (or in this video) is that the drink is made of coffee and chocolate. This might not seem like much of a feat to you, but it’s actually really hard to make a good chocolate coffee drink.
So why doesn’t everyone do it? Well, no one has ever been able to figure out how to get the two flavors to mix seamlessly. It’s not like when you mix lemonade with vodka: you can still taste both flavors even though there is some overlap between them. No one seems to have figured out how to blend chocolate and coffee into something that tastes
In the past several years, there has been a proliferation of specialty coffee shops offering drinks made with micro-foamed milk, including those at Starbucks. The foam is a mixture of milk and air that is heated and then aerated to make it light and foamy. It’s unlike anything you’ve had before: smooth, creamy without being heavy, and light enough so that you can drink it without a straw.
The texture is certainly part of the appeal. But the taste is more interesting. If you were to make this at home by heating up milk and mixing in air using a whisk or immersion blender, it would have a similar texture but the flavor would be slightly sour. And if you add sugar to mask that flavor, your drink would quickly become syrup-y tasting. The secret of these drinks is the way they are sweetened: by adding sugar alcohols like erythritol (which doesn’t taste as sweet as sugar), which are absorbed more slowly into the bloodstream than sugars like glucose or sucrose. A cup of coffee made with this kind of foam tastes like coffee with cream, not sweetened coffee—and it won’t give you a sugar rush.
Tasting one of these foamy coffees for the first time feels like an occasion
In the nearly 30 years since I graduated from college, I have been to too many graduation parties to count. And at every one of them, there has been cake.
Cake is nice. But it’s really not that original. I mean, you can get a cake at a bakery or buy one in the frozen food aisle of any supermarket in America. So if you want to make your graduation party stand out, you’re going to have to do something different.
Forget cupcakes and sheet cake. Forget chocolate and vanilla as your only choices in frosting flavor. And definitely forget those plastic forks.
Instead, skip the obvious and go for dessert drinks as the big finale of your graduation party. Because nothing says “I’m ready for my life to begin” like having a drink with a pastry sticking out of it.*