Café Maria Theresia: Decadent Coffee Cocktail

The Café Maria Theresia is a boozy coffee cocktail that’s popular in classic Vienna coffee houses. Follow this easy Café Maria Theresia recipe and craft the decadent cocktail in your home.

There’s something magical about boozy beverages that double as dessert, especially when they provide a caffeine kick. Yes, we like to stay awake long enough to enjoy our sugar highs.

The Cafe Maria Theresia is a unicorn drink that completes the tricky trifecta of being boozy, caffeinated and sweet all at the same time. And, if you decorate your Cafe Maria Theresia with multicolored sprinkles, the drink will bring a unicorn rainbow to the party.

The Café Maria Theresia is a bit of a hybrid. The kaffeehaus staple is both a coffee drink and a dessert drink. No hidden gem, it’s incredibly easy to find at classic Vienna cafes.

However, not everybody lives in Vienna or has plans to travel to Austria’s capital city anytime soon. That’s why we came up with a Café Maria Theresia recipe that’s easy to make at home no matter where you live.

Our Café Maria Theresia recipe includes coffee, orange liqueur, sugar and lots of whipped cream. The best Vienna coffee houses finish the coffee cocktail with colored sprinkles, and we do too.

Warning
You may crave Austrian desserts like Kaiserschmarrn after a few sips of this colorful cocktail.

Would you like to hear a story about how Empress Maria Theresa, the Café Maria Theresia’s namesake, invented Austria’s iconic coffee cocktail? That story would surely be filled with both intrigue and whipped cream.

Sadly, that story doesn’t exist.

We don’t know why the Café Maria Theresia was named after the Habsburg ruler or if she ever satisfied her sweet tooth by imbibing the decadent dessert drink.

What we do know is that the regally named coffee cocktail is a staple at Vienna kaffeehauses like Café Ritter and Café Sperl more than two centuries after Maria Theresa’s 40-year reign ended.

We also know that drinking a Café Maria Theresia is a bucket-list item for both cocktail connoisseurs and coffee drinkers who travel to the Austrian capital. Without doubt, the Café Maria Theresia is a drinkable Vienna food favorite.

Our Café Maria Theresia recipe has the following ingredients:

Despite the coffee cocktail’s international origin, you should be able to easily find all of these ingredients at your local market and liquor store. And if you’re lucky, you may already have them in your pantry and liquor cabinet.

Ingredient quantities are detailed in the printable recipe card below.

Since coffee is the primary Café Maria Theresia ingredient, using quality coffee in our Café Maria Theresia recipe is a must.

We brew coffee for our Café Maria Theresia recipe using the same single-origin coffee beans that we use to brew our morning joe. Depending on the day, those beans may be from Brazil, Colombia or Ethiopia.

While people typically brew these types of beans with a Hario V60 or Chemex, we use a simple yet stylish Italian auto-drip coffee machine produced by Smeg.

You can purchase a SMEG automatic coffee maker from Amazon if you like its style too.

Orange liqueur is an integral ingredient that gives the Café Maria Theresia its zesty orange flavor. You can use Cointreau, Grand Marnier, Orange Curaçao or triple sec. We use Cointreau in our recipe.

Cointreau is our go-to orange liqueur for cocktail recipes that call for orange liqueur or triple sec, as well as for some that don’t. We like Cointreau’s balanced flavor. Made in France, it has a 40% ABV.

Discover more Cointreau cocktails.

You’ll want to assemble the ingredients and tools before you craft a Café Maria Theresia. Good news! You won’t need any fancy tools or equipment to craft this drink.

The first step is to fill a glass mug with boiling water and then empty it after a minute or two. This step heats the mug and ensures that the coffee cocktail stays warm.

We like to boil water with an electric kettle since it’s so fast and efficient to use.

Measure the orange liqueur and pour it into the warmed glass mug. We use a Japanese jigger to measure liquor for this and other recipes to avoid spillage and ensure accuracy.

Buy a Japanese jigger from Amazon if you need a jigger or want an inexpensive upgrade.

Add sugar and stir with a bar spoon until the sugar is fully dissolved.

Pour coffee into the mug and gently stir.

Top with as much whipped cream as you desire.

You can use canned whipped cream like Reddi-Wip unless you’re an overachiever who wants to make whipped cream from scratch. You can also use fresh whipping cream with an iSi gun.

Garnish with a smattering of sprinkles unless you’d rather garnish your cocktail with chocolate shavings or slivered orange zest. We say go for the sprinkles.

Fun Fact
We both grew up using the word jimmies instead of sprinkles. As we later learned, they’re the same thing. Either way, you can buy sprinkles from Amazon if you need a jar of the colorful candy topping.

If your newfound love for the Café Maria Theresia inspires you to craft more coffee cocktails, we suggest starting with the following classic concoctions:

Discover 10 essential bar tools for the home mixologist.

💡 Frequently Asked Questions

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