Food: The Calculus of Affogato

Affogato:  n. Italian for “drowned.” SlicedBread for “the intersection between a cappuccino and an ice cream sundae.”

There is a short list of things that I could eat every day for the rest of my life, and coffee and ice cream are near the top of that list. When I lived in Florence  I learned it is extremely gauche to order cappuccino after dinner- in Italy that coffee drink is for breakfast only – but it is accepted and encouraged to eat gelato all day long.  Affogato combines the two foods, multi-tasking at its finest.

The basic recipe is a scoop of vanilla or chocolate gelato (or ice cream) topped with a shot of espresso, finished with whipped cream. Some prefer to include a shot of Amaretto or other liquor, but then you’re getting into Venn diagrams with unions between tiramisu, coffee, and sundaes, and that’s just too complicated for dessert.