Whipped coffee's prettiest trend, made the way it should be made: with raw honey, and without the one mistake that ruins it. Here is a recipe from the team at Goldswarm.
Dalgona coffee went viral because it is genuinely magic: instant coffee, a sweetener, and a splash of water beaten into a thick, glossy cloud that floats on a glass of milk. Swap the white sugar for raw honey and the whole thing gets better, with a softer foam and a deeper, floral sweetness that holds its own against strong coffee. But there is one step almost every recipe online gets wrong, and it quietly throws away everything that makes raw honey worth using.
At Goldswarm, we work with raw, multiflora honey harvested in West Africa, where bees forage across wildflowers. That floral identity is the entire point of using real honey instead of generic sweetness, and it is exactly what a drink like this needs: the honey has to be tasted through a thick layer of coffee. This is how to make it so the honey actually shows up.
Makes 1 generous serving. The honey is the star, so use one with real personality.
This is a recipe, not medical advice. According to USDA FoodData Central, one tablespoon of honey (~21 g) provides about 64 calories and ~17 g of sugar, so the 1.5–2 tbsp here contributes roughly 96–128 calories and 26–34 g of sugar, plus whatever your milk adds.
Two things worth being honest about. First, caffeine: 2 tablespoons of instant coffee is a lot, closer to two or three regular cups than one, so this is best as a morning drink and not one to have three of. Second, honey is still sugar; using raw honey instead of refined white sugar is a real flavor-and-character upgrade, not a free pass, and both fit best within the USDA's added-sugar guidelines.
One firm safety note: never give honey in any form to a child under 12 months old, because of the risk of infant botulism.
White sugar is sweetness and nothing else. Raw, unfiltered honey is a far more interesting ingredient, and the difference is not just marketing.
And this is where origin matters. Goldswarm's honey is raw and traceable to specific West African forage zones, never heated above hive temperature, so its volatile aromatic compounds survive intact. That is the difference between a honey that disappears under the coffee and one that tastes like somewhere.
A bold, raw, unfiltered honey with real flavor, because it has to be tasted through a thick layer of strong coffee. Pale, heat-treated supermarket honey tends to disappear. Robust raw honey, like Goldswarm's raw West African honey, holds its own and gives the foam genuine depth.
You can, but the result varies a lot. Mild, processed honey reads as generic sweetness. A characterful raw honey is what makes the honey version worth doing instead of just using sugar.
For flavor, yes; honey adds floral and caramel notes sugar cannot. Nutritionally it is still a sugar, but unlike refined sugar it also contributes naturally occurring antioxidant compounds, and the benefits are clearest when it replaces other sweeteners. Just follow the heat rule below.
High heat degrades many of raw honey's heat-sensitive enzymes and delicate aromatic compounds. That is why this recipe dissolves the coffee in hot water first, then cools it before the honey goes in, so the honey keeps its character.
Yes. A whisk and 5–8 minutes of steady effort will get you there; it just takes more arm. A milk frother or a jar with a tight lid (shaken hard) can also work in a pinch.
Goldswarm ships raw, multiflora West African honey directly across the United States.
Everything behind the recipe, for the curious and the precise.
| Yield | 1 generous serving |
| Active + total time | ~3 min whipping; ~10 min total including the cooling step |
| Equipment | Deep bowl + hand mixer (fastest), or a whisk, frother, or sealed jar |
| Starting ratio | Coffee : water = 1 : 1 by volume; honey at roughly three-quarters of that, adjusted to taste |
| Why instant coffee | Freeze-dried instant dissolves into a concentrated solution whose soluble solids stabilize the air you whip in, creating the foam. Espresso and brewed coffee are too dilute to hold that structure. |
| Temperature rule | Keep the honey below ~104°F / 40°C. Above that, raw honey's enzymes and aromatic compounds begin to break down, which is why the coffee is cooled before the honey is added. |
| Caffeine | High. Two tablespoons of instant coffee is roughly the caffeine of two to three regular cups. Best earlier in the day. |
Done right, the foam is thick, glossy, and the color of pale caramel, holding a soft peak that slowly folds back on itself, more like a loose mousse than a stiff meringue. That softness is the honey doing its job.
Honey foam behaves differently from sugar foam. Granulated sugar gives dalgona its classic stiff, sculptural peaks because it is a dry crystal that supports structure. Honey is liquid, with no crystalline scaffolding and a little more water and fructose, so it whips into a silkier, more delicate foam that sits softer on the milk. It is a trade: you give up some of the stiff-peak drama and gain a smoother texture and a fuller flavor.
Dialing in the texture
Sugar can make a stiffer foam. What it cannot do is make the drink taste like anything beyond sweet. Raw West African honey turns a pretty trend into something with actual flavor: , the warm, floral, slightly caramelized character that only comes from honey that was never stripped down by heat or heavy filtration. Make it once with our raw honey and the supermarket bottle will feel like a different ingredient entirely.
