MANY YEARS AGO Eileen and I took our first trip to Italy—the honeymoon we never had. We arrived at our Venice hotel on the wrong day, and were forced to grab the only room left on Lido. While dining at Trattoria Africa, around the corner, we noticed the locals ordering frothy drinks to accompany their blueberry cake desserts. We followed suit, and learned that the drinks were called sgroppini. Our scheduling “mistake” became a treasured memory.

Italians make their sgroppini with prosecco and...