About 10 years ago, Mr. Willy Hansen who is barista trainer at Solberg & Hansen, showed me how to make a delicios iced coffee called Caffè al freddo Shakerato. He simply put some ice cubes in a shaker along with a double shot of espresso (at that time a double shot was a full 60 ml+ made on a blend with a lot of Monsooned Malabar, aged Brazilian coffee and robusta) with 2 teaspoons of sugar and shook the mixture for about 30 seconds. The result was a foamy iced espresso served in a wine glass. I was astonished by the refreshing flavours and also the looks and “wow” effect from the texture.

I have served a tremendous amount of Shakerato during my long barista career, but for the past 3 years I have been really disappointed by the taste of this once delicious drink. I don’t know what has gone wrong, as I truly believe coffees are getting better every year, my espresso is definately tasting better now than 10 years ago, but still  none of the shakerato’s  taste like the first one I ever tried.

I decided last week to start working on a better recipe. After some trials, I found that what I really disliked with my shakerato’s is the watery texture and the bitter foam on top. Therefore I decided to give the old drink a real makeover, and after 3 hours of intensive trial and error, I was finally happy with the result. The flavour profile of the TW Re-Constructed Shakerato is a lot cleaner and more defined shakerato, still with that kick that the old Shakerato once gave me.

Here is a general recipe for the “TW re-constructed Shakerato.” I recommend using a single origin coffee in order to get more flavour definition:

1. Make  0,5l filter style coffee of Cielito Lindo “espresso roast.” Add sugar to taste and 3-4 double espressos made on Cielito Lindo espresso. Add Gelatine or similar and stir. Strain liquid in to a espuma syphon and charge with nitrus oxide. Shake well. Leave to cool in the fridge.

2. Make 2 double espressos of Cielito Lindo. Pour it over some ice cubes in a stirring glass along with 1 teaspoon of sugar. Stir until cool (like you stir a dry martini)

3. Strain cooled espresso in to a martini glass

4. Layer about 1cm of  coffee foam on top and serve.

There you go.  A “Tim Wendelboe Re-Constructed Shakerato.” Stirred, not shaken…