Coffee Recipe: The Spanish Latte
After going down a coffee rabbit hole on Instagram I found a comment mentioning a Spanish Latte and after a bit of Googling and a quick trip to the supermarket I made a cup for myself.
What is Spanish Latte?
Basically, it’s an espresso based drink with textured normal milk and condensed milk. Slightly sweeter than a normal latte but not as sweet as a latte with flavored syrup.
The Origin
Adding condensed milk to coffee is not a new thing and maybe you’ve already had a Vietnamese Coffee, Cafe Bonbon or Cafe Canario, but this latte as it’s showing up right now is a slight variation on these. First of all, it’s using espresso instead of drip coffee and it’s not using just condensed milk but it balances it out with textured milk.
There are also mentions about coffees with the same recipe but different names like Havana Latte, Cuban Latte, you can probably see a pattern here.
There’s not a lot of information out there about Spanish Latte so it’s really hard to pinpoint where it first started. The place that shows up most often in my searches is Think Coffee in NYC, although there are a lot of mentions about the drink in all corners of the continental USA.
My Spanish Latte Recipe
I started out with no measurements for my latte and I played around a bit with the ratio until I landed on the one that you see bellow.
Ingredients
- 2 espresso shots
- 1 oz sweetened condensed milk
- 5–6 oz textured steamed milk
Putting everything together
Using a warm latte cup I add the sweetened condensed milk. I don’t heat up the milk because I haven’t found that it’s worth the fuss of heating up such a small quantity.
I pull the espresso shots directly over the milk in the latte cup. I give it a quick stir, but that’s optional since adding the textured milk on top will mix everything anyway.
Texture the milk the way you would usually do for a latte, or just heat up milk and pour it over the coffee and condensed milk.
Note: You might need a little bit more or less milk depending on the size of your latte cup, that’s if you use specific one or just a cappuccino one, a mug or an avocado shell…
The Iced Spanish Latte
Since it’s finally summer and really warm in Seattle where I live I should note that this drink works great iced.
Using the same ingredients I like to switch the order a bit. I add the ice and then the coffee on top (make sure you don’t pour the hot coffee on the cold glass because it might shatter).
At this step, I like to add the condensed milk because I always love the way the condensed milk mixes with the coffee. Then I just top it off with cold milk (I don’t really see a point to texture the milk if you drink it iced).
Small Bonus
For an alcoholic version of the latte check out the recipe from NYTimes here.
Let me know if you tried the recipe and what you think about it. If you like this post and the recipe please give it a like, it helps out a lot. Thanks!
