Apron Free Cooking ~ Iced Mocha Vanilla Coffee

By Noel Lizotte

Lately, we’ve been try­ing hard to stay cool. We’ve been lucky enough to have elec­tric­ity, when many folks lost power due to storms. We’ve had the ceil­ing fans going and we’re drink­ing lots of cold beverages.

At our house, cold bev­er­ages take the form of iced tea, juices and water. In search of some­thing slightly dif­fer­ent, we mixed up a batch of lemon­ade the other day. That was a nice change, but didn’t do any­thing for our caf­feine intake.

My hus­band made a pot of cof­fee to head off the caf­feine headache. I just couldn’t drink it hot and I’m not sure how he man­aged. I decided to jazz mine up a bit and cre­ated an iced cof­fee drink. It’s not the same as going to Star­bucks, but it’s cheaper and I didn’t have to drive across town!

Iced Mocha Vanilla Coffee

½ cup French Vanilla Creamer

1 cup Cof­fee, cooled

2 T. Choco­late Syrup

Sweet­ener, optional

Ice

Whipped Cream

Freeze some cof­fee in ice cube trays. In a tall glass, driz­zle choco­late syrup around the sides of the glass. Add two or three cof­fee ice cubes. Pour in the French Vanilla Creamer and add sweet­ener if desired. Add the cof­fee. Top with whipped cream and another driz­zle of choco­late. Serve.

Make it a meal: Add some cook­ies for an after­noon snack. A bowl of ice cream is a good option for a dessert with your coffee.

Approx­i­mate Nutri­tional Value per serv­ing: Serv­ings per Recipe: 1, Calo­ries: 101, Fat: 10g, Cho­les­terol: 0mg, Sodium: 75mg, Total Carbs: 5g, Dietary Fiber: 0g, Pro­tein: 0g.

Vari­a­tions: Instead of French Vanilla Creamer, use Hazel­nut or Mocha Mint. Add some tiny choco­late sprin­kles on top of the whipped cream.

This is a nice refresh­ing bev­er­age. It feels fancy when served in a pretty glass, but if all you’ve got are reg­u­lar tum­bler style glasses, use them. Don’t hold off try­ing this recipe think­ing you need a fancy container!

The trick to keep­ing the cof­fee fla­vor strong is using ice cubes made from cof­fee. It takes a lit­tle plan­ning, but worth the extra time. I’ve used the last part of the cof­fee pot from the morn­ing brew, let it cool and pour into ice cube trays. By lunch time, I’ve got frozen solid cof­fee cubes.

You can use ice cubes made from water if you don’t have cof­fee ones, just know that your iced bev­er­age will become diluted as the cubes melt. Cof­fee cubes main­tain the strength of the cof­fee fla­vor as they melt, there’s no dilution.

Cool­ing the cof­fee before you pre­pare this recipe helps too. If you pour hot cof­fee into your glass, all of your ice will melt almost imme­di­ately. That defeats the pur­pose of the tall ice cold bev­er­age when tem­per­a­tures hit the high 90s.

Noel Lizotte is break­ing free of cor­po­rate stress with con­ve­nience cook­ing! This recipe is sim­i­lar to ones printed in her cook­book Apron Free Cook­ing which is avail­able on the web­site www.apronfreecooking.com. She also writes a monthly col­umn at www.culinary.net.

Posted by Noel Lizotte on Jul 11 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.