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Smoking Chimney

Recipes from a working kitchen · Cape Town

Parfait Glace

By Marna Ross Updated 12 August 2026 4.85 from 62 ratings French
Coffee Parfait Glacé is yet another great choice for a Christmas or Thanksgiving dessert. You can also make it in advance and give it time to freeze overnight. And not to mention from a professional kitchen’s point of view this is also a wonderful idea to serve in your restaurant as it can easily be made in advance and used per order like the chocolate and glazed cherrie semifreddo. And afterwards you do not sit with left over desserts that will go off after a certain amount of days. Whatever you don’t eat up, can be frozen again! Or cut just off as much as you need. The chef will be happy too not coping with too many tasks! Coffee Parfait Glacé is a frozen desserts, from France. You can also play with all kinds of variations from chocolate to coffee (Mocha) and fruit ones like strawberry or lime. The key to making coffee Parfait Glacé or any other flavour Parfait Glacé is that it is a mixture of a sugar syrup, eggs and cream to make this specific a Parfait Glacé. In chef school they used to teach us if it does not consist of the actual ingredients to make up the classical dish, it can not be called the same name as the classical dish.
A sleek, elegant slice of cold parfait glace frozen dessert on a plate.
Prep 20 min
Cook 30 min
Total 50 min
Serves 12

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Ingredients

  • 8 egg yolks
  • 100 ml water
  • 250 ml sugar
  • 10ml water
  • 500 ml whipped cream
  • 100ml coffee liqueur or strong coffee

Method

  1. Line a terrine with cling film

  2. Make a sugar syrup with the 250 ml sugar and the 100 ml water

  3. Prepare a sauce pan with a third full of water and bring to a boil but once it starts to boil, reduce the heat

  4. Mix the egg yolks with the 10 ml of water in a stainless steel bowl

  5. Place the bowl over the sauce pot ensuring the water does not touch the bottom of the bowl

  6. Gradually add the sugar syrup to the egg yolk mix

  7. Beat the mixture until soft peaks form

  8. Take off the heat and fold in the liqueur

  9. Whisk until the mixture cool down

  10. TIP: For cooling down more easily, have a bowl of ice water ready and place the liqueur Parfait Glacé stainless steel bowl slightly into the bowl of ice water

  11. Fold in the whipped cream

  12. Pour the mixture into the terrine and freeze overnight

  13. Garnish with fresh fruit of choice, chopped nuts, salted caramel and peanuts, creme fraîche or nut praline

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