• 2 tablespoons of instant coffee
• 2 tablespoons of granulated sugar
• 2 tablespoons of boiling water
• 2 cups of milk
• splash of desired liqueur

To start, add the coffee, sugar, & boiling water into a bowl. The recipe can be easily doubled or tripled, but this one is just perfect for a lovely quarantine coffee date with your significant other. Using a hand mixer, whip on one of the higher speeds. My mixer has whisk additions, which made this a whole lot easier! Depending on you gadget (or lack thereof) you’ll need from about 2 minutes of whipping to perhaps 10 if doing it entirely by hand. Scrape down the sides and make sure to whip up any bits that didn’t get whipped.

Taste the silky merengue – it’ll be very strong! But diluted with the milk, it’ll make all the delicious difference. Add your milk of choice to a glass with a splash of goodness (any liqueur will do, I added Frangelico for a hazelnut-ty kick, but Kahlúa or Bailey’s would work wonderfully as well!). Some people also add ice to the milk, or if it’s been in the fridge, it should be cold enough to enjoy. Spoon the coffee on top of the milk and ta-da! To drink it up, use a spoon or a straw to swirl it into your milk. Sip & enjoy!

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The TikTok trend of the year, thanks mostly to lack of Starbucks around the world in these dark quarantine times, has exploded – almost overnight – all over the Internet as the It-Drink of the moment, and clearly everyone has fallen in love with Dalgona coffee. The success is thanks in part to the fact that it contains just three simple ingredients – all of which most people have in the cupboard – AND also thanks to its amazingly Instagramable photogenic qualities, making it a sensation all over social media. Along with banana bread & homemade pizza, it has become one of the hottest foods to prepare at home during the coronavirus lockdown, when people refraining from going out have started experimenting with stuff in the kitchen.

But, where did this drink come from & how on Earth did it because such a fad? Truth be told, it being popularized during the coronavirus pandemic is no surprise…the magic of mixing these three simple ingredients and whipping them enough to turn into a thick whipped cream-esque mixture is almost too good to be true! The viral trend of sharing recipes & pics of the DIY coffee first gained prominence during the social distancing orders in South Korea, and for that reason it was dubbed the ‘quarantine drink’ or ‘quarantine coffee’. The coining of the name is credited to a South Korean actor who ordered a whipped coffee (also called beaten coffee in India) at an eatery in Macau and likened the taste to that of dalgona, a type of Korean honeycomb toffee, even though it doesn’t actually contain dalgona…

Then came the hashtag. Homemade versions of Dalgona coffee began spreading on South Korean YouTube channels before going viral on TikTok. For those of you who need to know, TikTok is a Chinese video-sharing social networking service used to create short dance, lip-sync, comedy, & talent videos – and since the lockdown, it became THE monstrous entity of user-generated content, chewing down boredom, fatigue, & fear endlessly. It’s a superb time waster. And in lieu of freedom or gainful employment, right now the only thing some people have in abundance is time to burn. Sadly, this is how most decide to spend it, and since it’s designed to be addictive, with everlasting content & algorithms that observe & deliver your own personal interests…screen time can literally be an entire day’s activity. And when you finally get tired of scrolling, you can go on to make videos of your own, which many people find wildly entertaining. Unlike Instagram, which needs us to be enjoying the outer world for swag & shots, TikTokkers usually film themselves at home, in their bedrooms, which works wonders for these hard times.

And so the #dalgonacoffeechallenge became the new craze. There are actually instructions on how to participate in the Instagram Dalgona coffee challenge: 1. click a nice picture of the process, 2. click a picture of the coffee mix & the end result, 3. click good pictures of your Dalgona coffee, 4. share it with relevant hashtags & tags for Instagram Dalgona coffee challenge. Apparently, the spike in interest during the quarantine period has been attributed to the calming effect of watching DIY videos…which we are all…clearly…doing…

The coronavirus has definitely peeled away our plans for the future & returned all of us to a childlike state. We sit at home, like children, and wait to be told what to do. And while we wait, it is only natural we eat, sleep, & play online. All to stay safe!