Cortadito (Cuban)
Drink · Cuban · Latin American
A Cuban coffee “cut” with hot milk: a sweetened cafecito with espumita, topped with an equal amount of steamed milk.
Untested: not yet made in this kitchen. It is here for the Cuban Coffee and the Cafecito page.
Ingredients
- ½ cup (4 oz) hot, freshly made Cuban-style coffee from a stovetop moka pot (see the Café Cubano recipe)
- 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
- ½ cup (4 oz) whole milk
Directions
- Make the coffee in a moka pot. While it brews, heat the milk in a small pan until steaming, or steam it with an espresso machine’s wand.
- Put the sugar in a measuring cup, add the first spoonful of coffee and beat hard into a thick, pale paste.
- Stir in the rest of the coffee until the paste has dissolved into it.
- Divide the sweetened coffee between two small glasses or cups.
- Top each with half of the hot milk.
Notes
Where this comes from Quantities after Billy Parisi’s “Cortadito Coffee Recipe”; he is not Cuban-American, and his page gives a yield of 8 and “about 3 tablespoons” of sugar in its steps, both of which disagree with its own ingredient list (2 tablespoons of sugar, 2 drinks). The amount of milk follows Three Guys From Miami, who say a cortadito has “anywhere from a tablespoon or two to half milk and half coffee”; this recipe is the half-and-half end. Evaporated or condensed milk Some Miami cafés make cortaditos with evaporated or condensed milk. Whether that is old Cuban practice or a Miami habit is not settled. The photo A cup of Cuban coffee with milk, 2013; the photographer labels it only “Cuban coffee”, and it is not this recipe’s cup.