Skip to content
POURCRAFT BAR

COLD FOAM

Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Foam

Two parts milk to one part heavy cream, frothed cold, thick enough to sit on an iced coffee instead of sinking into it.

  • 2Whole milk57%4 oz
  • 1Heavy cream29%2 oz
  • 1/2Vanilla syrup14%1 oz
Ice
None in the foam itself
Glass
Poured onto a 12 oz iced coffee
Serves
2

Ingredients

Batch size

2 servings
  • 4 ozwhole milk, cold
  • 2 ozheavy cream, coldSwap: Half-and-half gives a looser foam that holds about half as long
  • 1 ozvanilla syrupSwap: 1 oz simple syrup plus 1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Method

  1. Chill the cup as well as the liquid

    5 minutes in the freezer

    Fat has to stay cold to hold air. A room-temperature frothing cup warms 6 oz of dairy noticeably in the twenty seconds it takes to whip, and that is enough to change the result.

  2. Combine everything before you start

    Syrup added after frothing knocks the air back out. It goes in at the beginning, where the sugar also helps the foam hold its shape.

  3. Froth at the surface, not at the bottom

    20–25 seconds

    Hold the whisk just under the surface so it pulls air down into the liquid. A whisk buried at the bottom of the cup spins the dairy without introducing anything to it.

  4. Stop at the soft ridge

    Lift the whisk out and draw it across the surface. If the line it leaves holds its shape for about two seconds, it is done. Kept going, the fat begins to clump and the foam turns grainy and refuses to pour.

  5. Pour over the back of a spoon

    Held just above the surface of the coffee, the spoon spreads the foam sideways instead of letting it punch a hole and sink. This is the whole difference between a layer and a swirl.

The one thing that ruins it

Frothing it warm. Dairy that has sat out for ten minutes will foam up convincingly and then collapse back to liquid before the drink reaches the table.

Tools you actually need

If you need one

01Strongest aeration
Maestri House LunaFro Rechargeable Frother

Maestri House

Maestri House LunaFro Rechargeable Frother

The only frother here that states its motor speed — 8000 RPM — alongside a 1200 mAh battery and two detachable whisks. Speed is the specification that matters for this category, because aeration is a race against the dairy warming up.

Best for
Cold foam, where the whole job has to finish in about twenty seconds
Key spec
8000 RPM motor, 1200 mAh battery, 2 detachable whisks, stand
  • States 8000 RPM, the only speed figure published across this lineup
  • Two detachable whisks cover foam and powder dispersion separately
  • Detachable heads can be washed properly rather than rinsed in place
  • Stand included, which is what keeps it on the counter and in use
  • Rechargeable means it is unusable while flat, unlike a battery unit
  • Two whisk heads are two more small parts to lose
  • A 1200 mAh cell adds weight compared with an AA wand
View on Amazon

Technique behind this drink

Make it ahead, or batch it

The syrup can be made weeks ahead and the dairy can be measured into the cup and left in the refrigerator, but the foam itself cannot be made in advance in any useful sense — it begins losing structure the moment the whisk comes out.

Aeration is what breaks here, and it breaks in two directions. Froth a quadruple batch in the same cup and the whisk can no longer reach enough of the surface, so you get a thin skin of foam on top of unaerated dairy. Make it in the right-sized cup and the foam is fine — but it starts settling immediately, so by the fourth drink the last pour is visibly looser than the first. For more than two drinks, froth in pairs and pour each pair before starting the next.