Slow Coffee Club

Home brewers of Belgrade · Saturdays since 2019

From the Saturday table

Recipes with coffee in them

Somebody always brings something. Over the years the plate of things-to-go-with-coffee became a collection of things-made-with-coffee, and these are the ones people asked for twice. Most come from Jelena, who bakes; a few from Dragan, who doesn’t, but has opinions.

Drink · Dragan’s

Domaća kafa with ratluk

  • Serves 2
  • 10 minutes
  • Džezva

The coffee of every Belgrade kitchen, served the proper way: on a small tray with a glass of cold water and a cube of ratluk (rahat lokum) dusted with sugar. Drink the water first to clear your palate, then sip the coffee slowly, and stop before the grounds.

  • 150 ml cold water (two fildžan cups, plus a splash)
  • 14 g powder-fine coffee (two heaped teaspoons)
  • 0–2 tsp sugar, to taste
  • 2 pieces ratluk — rose or walnut
  • 2 glasses cold water to serve
  1. Put the cold water and any sugar in the džezva and warm it on a medium flame until tiny bubbles form at the edges.
  2. Take it off the heat, add the coffee and stir until it sinks completely.
  3. Return it to the lowest flame. Watch it. When the foam climbs to the neck, lift it off; let it settle, and repeat once.
  4. Spoon some foam into each cup, then pour slowly down the side of the cup.
  5. Serve on a tray with the water and ratluk. Wait a minute before drinking, for the grounds to settle.

Sweetness, the Belgrade way: gorka is bitter, no sugar; srednja is medium, about one teaspoon per cup; slatka is sweet, two. The sugar goes in at the start, never afterwards. Full method on the brew guides page.

Drink · summer

Espresso tonic, no espresso machine

  • Serves 1
  • 5 minutes
  • AeroPress or moka

Bitter, bright, fizzy, and the drink that convinces people who say they don’t like black coffee. A fruity washed Ethiopian or a Kenyan is ideal. The trick is to pour the coffee onto the tonic, not the other way around, or it will foam over.

  • 18 g light-roast coffee, fine
  • 80 g water for brewing
  • 150 ml tonic water, very cold
  • A handful of ice
  • 1 strip orange or grapefruit peel
  1. Make a short, strong coffee: AeroPress with 18 g coffee and 80 g water at 85 °C, stir, steep 1 minute, press. Or use a moka pot and take only the first 50 ml.
  2. Let the coffee cool for a couple of minutes — hot coffee on cold tonic foams wildly.
  3. Fill a tall glass with ice and pour in the tonic.
  4. Pour the coffee slowly over the back of a spoon so it floats in a dark layer on top.
  5. Twist the peel over the glass to spray its oil, drop it in, and serve before the layers mix.

Bake · Jelena’s

Coffee-cardamom cake with walnuts

  • One 24 cm cake
  • 1 hour 15 min
  • Oven, 175 °C

The cake that turns up whenever the club has something to celebrate, or nothing in particular. Moist, not too sweet, scented with cardamom and soaked in strong coffee syrup while still warm. It is better on day two, which is a test of willpower nobody has ever passed.

  • 200 g plain flour (tip 400)
  • 2 tsp baking powder, pinch of salt
  • 2 tsp ground cardamom (seeds of about 15 pods)
  • 100 g walnuts, toasted and chopped
  • 150 g butter, soft
  • 170 g light brown sugar
  • 3 eggs
  • 120 ml strong coffee, cooled (moka or AeroPress)
  • 100 g sour cream (kiselo mleko works too)
  • For the syrup: 80 ml hot coffee + 60 g sugar
  • For the glaze: 120 g icing sugar + 2 tbsp coffee
  1. Heat the oven to 175 °C and line a 24 cm round tin. Whisk the flour, baking powder, salt and cardamom together.
  2. Beat the butter and brown sugar for a good four minutes until pale. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each.
  3. Fold in half the flour, then the coffee and sour cream, then the rest of the flour. Stop as soon as there are no dry streaks. Fold in the walnuts.
  4. Bake for 40–45 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean.
  5. While it bakes, dissolve the sugar in the hot coffee for the syrup. Poke the warm cake all over with a skewer and spoon the syrup over slowly.
  6. When completely cool, mix the glaze and drizzle it over. Finish with a few crushed walnuts and a pinch of cardamom.

Jelena says: grind the cardamom yourself, from the pods. Pre-ground cardamom tastes of the jar. And use the same coffee you’re drinking with it — a chocolatey Brazilian or the Mount Huye natural is perfect.

Drink · a Belgrade classic

Ledena kafa (iced coffee, the old way)

  • Serves 2
  • 10 minutes
  • Any strong coffee

Order an iced coffee at a traditional Belgrade café and you will not get coffee with ice. You will get a tall glass of cold coffee, vanilla ice cream and a cloud of whipped cream, with a long spoon. It is a dessert pretending to be a drink, and we have no problem with that.

  • 200 ml strong coffee, chilled (moka or cold brew concentrate)
  • 2 tsp sugar, dissolved while the coffee is hot
  • 4 scoops vanilla ice cream
  • 150 ml cold milk
  • 100 ml whipping cream, whipped soft
  • Grated dark chocolate
  1. Sweeten the hot coffee, then chill it completely — at least an hour in the fridge.
  2. Put two scoops of ice cream into each tall glass.
  3. Mix the cold coffee with the milk and pour it over the ice cream.
  4. Top with a generous cloud of whipped cream and grated chocolate.
  5. Serve with a long spoon and a straw. Stir or don’t; both camps exist in the club.

Bake · Christmas

Coffee vanilice

  • About 40 cookies
  • 1 hour + resting
  • Oven, 170 °C

Vanilice are the small walnut sandwich cookies every Serbian household makes at Christmas, filled with jam and buried in vanilla sugar. Ours swap the usual apricot jam for a coffee-and-plum filling and add a little espresso powder to the dough. They keep for two weeks in a tin, in theory.

  • 300 g plain flour
  • 100 g ground walnuts
  • 200 g lard or cold butter (or half and half)
  • 100 g sugar
  • 1 egg + 1 yolk
  • 2 tsp very finely ground coffee
  • Zest of 1 lemon
  • 200 g plum & espresso pekmez (below) or plum jam
  • 100 g icing sugar + 1 vanilla pod for dusting
  1. Rub the fat into the flour, walnuts, sugar, coffee and zest, then bring together with the egg and yolk. Do not overwork it. Wrap and chill for an hour.
  2. Roll out to 3 mm between two sheets of baking paper. Cut small rounds or flowers, about 3 cm across.
  3. Bake at 170 °C for 10–12 minutes — they should stay pale, just barely golden at the edges.
  4. When cool, sandwich pairs together with a little pekmez.
  5. Roll in icing sugar mixed with the seeds of the vanilla pod. Leave a day before eating so they soften.

Preserve · September

Plum & espresso pekmez

  • About 4 jars
  • 3 hours, mostly stirring
  • Heavy pot

Pekmez is a thick, sugar-light plum butter cooked down slowly until it is almost black. Jelena’s version adds strong coffee at the end, which deepens the colour and gives it a faint bitterness that keeps the sweetness honest. It first appeared on the plum-season Saturday.

  • 2 kg ripe požegača plums (or any dark, late plums), stoned
  • 250 g sugar
  • 100 ml very strong coffee (moka, first half only)
  • 1 cinnamon stick, 2 cloves
  • Juice of ½ lemon
  1. Put the plums, cinnamon and cloves in a wide, heavy pot over low heat with a splash of water. Cover until they collapse, about 20 minutes.
  2. Remove the spices and blend the plums smooth, or push them through a sieve if you want it silky.
  3. Add the sugar and cook uncovered on the lowest heat, stirring often with a wooden spoon, for two to two and a half hours. It will thicken and darken.
  4. It’s ready when a spoon drawn across the bottom leaves a clear path for a few seconds. Stir in the coffee and lemon juice and cook five minutes more.
  5. Pour into hot sterilised jars, close and turn upside down to cool.

Dessert · no-bake

Balkan biscuit tiramisu

  • Serves 8
  • 30 min + overnight
  • No oven

Instead of savoiardi, Serbian kitchens reach for the plain, crumbly petit-beurre style biscuits found in every corner shop. They soak up coffee beautifully and give a softer, almost cake-like result. Teodora brought this for her first Saturday and has been asked for it at every birthday since.

  • 400 g plain butter biscuits
  • 350 ml strong coffee, cooled, with 1 tbsp sugar
  • 500 g mascarpone
  • 4 very fresh eggs, separated
  • 100 g sugar
  • 2 tbsp rakija or dark rum (optional)
  • Cocoa powder for dusting
  1. Beat the yolks with the sugar until pale and thick. Beat in the mascarpone and the rakija, if using.
  2. Whisk the whites to soft peaks and fold them gently into the mascarpone.
  3. Dip the biscuits one at a time into the coffee — a quick dip, they soften fast — and lay them in a single layer in a dish.
  4. Spread a third of the cream on top. Repeat twice more, ending with cream.
  5. Cover and refrigerate overnight. Dust thickly with cocoa just before serving.

Drink · heatwave

Cold brew lemonade with lavender honey

  • Serves 4
  • 10 minutes
  • Cold brew

It sounds wrong. It is not. Bright lemon and smooth cold brew balance each other, and a spoonful of lavender honey from the Fruška Gora stall at the market rounds it off. Our river-day drink of 2026.

  • 250 ml cold brew concentrate (see guide)
  • 120 ml fresh lemon juice (about 3 lemons)
  • 3 tbsp lavender or acacia honey
  • 400 ml cold sparkling water
  • Ice, lemon slices, a sprig of mint
  1. Stir the honey into the lemon juice until it dissolves (warm it slightly if your honey is stiff).
  2. Fill four glasses with ice. Divide the lemon-honey mixture between them.
  3. Top up with sparkling water, leaving room at the top.
  4. Slowly pour the cold brew over the back of a spoon for a layered look. Garnish and serve straight away.

Drink · autumn

Cascara tea with quince

  • Serves 2
  • 10 minutes
  • Teapot or French press

Cascara is the dried skin of the coffee cherry, usually thrown away. Steeped like tea, it tastes of rosehip, dried cherry and tamarind, with a gentle bit of caffeine. Paired with a few slices of the quince that perfumes every Serbian kitchen in October, it’s the club’s favourite rainy-day drink.

  • 20 g cascara
  • 500 ml water at 95 °C
  • 4 thin slices fresh quince (or a spoonful of quince preserve, slatko od dunja)
  • 1 small piece of cinnamon
  • Honey, to taste
  1. Put the cascara, quince and cinnamon in a teapot or French press.
  2. Pour over the hot water and steep for 5 minutes.
  3. Strain into cups and sweeten lightly with honey if you like.
  4. Cold is good too: steep the same amounts in cold water in the fridge overnight.

Drink · winter

Honey-cinnamon moka with warm milk

  • Serves 2
  • 8 minutes
  • Moka pot

A small, strong, milky coffee for dark January mornings. The honey goes into the hot coffee, not the milk, so it dissolves properly. No milk frother needed — a jar with a lid and a good shake does the job.

  • 17 g coffee and 150 ml water for a 3-cup moka
  • 2 tsp honey
  • 1 pinch ground cinnamon
  • 150 ml whole milk
  1. Brew the moka pot as in the guide.
  2. Divide the honey and cinnamon between two small glasses, pour the hot coffee in and stir until dissolved.
  3. Warm the milk to about 60 °C (too hot to hold a finger in comfortably, not simmering). Pour it into a jar, close and shake hard for 20 seconds.
  4. Pour the milk into the coffee, spooning the foam on top. Dust with a little more cinnamon.

Savoury · the grill

Coffee and paprika rubbed vratina

  • Serves 4
  • 20 min + marinating
  • Grill or pan

Vratina is pork neck, the cut every Serbian barbecue is built on. Finely ground dark coffee in a dry rub gives a savoury, almost smoky crust that works brilliantly with sweet Serbian paprika. Stefan grilled this at the 2025 summer gathering and has since been banned from bringing anything else.

  • 4 pork neck steaks, about 2 cm thick
  • 2 tbsp finely ground dark-roast coffee
  • 1 tbsp sweet paprika, 1 tsp smoked paprika
  • 1 tbsp brown sugar
  • 2 tsp salt, 1 tsp black pepper
  • 1 tsp garlic powder
  • Sunflower oil
  1. Mix all the dry ingredients. Pat the meat dry and rub with a thin film of oil.
  2. Press the rub firmly into both sides. Leave in the fridge for at least two hours, or overnight.
  3. Take the meat out 30 minutes before cooking. Grill over medium-hot coals, or cook in a heavy pan, for 5–6 minutes per side.
  4. Rest five minutes. Serve with urnebes, raw onion and fresh bread.

Watch the heat: the sugar and coffee will scorch over flames that are too fierce. A good crust is dark brown, not black.

Dessert · two minutes

Kajmak affogato

  • Serves 1
  • 5 minutes
  • Moka or AeroPress

Milica’s invention, born of a fridge containing only kajmak, honey and a lot of coffee. Kajmak is the rich, slightly tangy clotted cream sold at every Belgrade market; frozen briefly with honey, it becomes something halfway between ice cream and cheesecake. Pour hot coffee over it and eat with a teaspoon.

  • 2 heaped tbsp young (mladi) kajmak
  • 1 tsp honey
  • 50 ml hot, strong coffee
  • A few toasted walnuts
  1. Mix the kajmak and honey, spoon it into a small glass and freeze for 30–40 minutes until firm at the edges.
  2. Brew a short, strong coffee.
  3. Pour the hot coffee over the kajmak at the table, scatter over the walnuts and eat at once.