Cheap Thrills

I used to have a $50 a week coffee habit.  I had no idea.

picture via Adventures in Midwestern Living.

I had some fraud occur on my bank account a few years back, and in order to clear the whole mess up I needed to stop in the bank and go over my account with them.  The entire transaction history aside from a few stops at ATM machines (and the fraud), were from coffee shops.  All the way down. And I'm not lying to you to make some humorous point about how much I love coffee.  That's the mother loving truth.

Coffee is expensive.  Annoyingly expensive, even though I generally consider myself a plain coffee/unsweetened latte kind of girl. I'm also not willing to go without it... which I don't feel is a sign I'm addicted, but a testament to my human right to have as many cups of coffee every day as I please (they tried to make me go to rehab, I said "no, no, no").  And during the fall, there is nothing more satisfying than a pumpkin spiced anything... caffeine +5 awesomeness.

I recently stumbled across this recipe for homemade pumpkin spice coffee syrup.  I keep it in a jar, pour it on everything, by Christmas I should be a full fledged diabetic. In all seriousness, it will tick you off how cheap and easy this stuff is to make. Really, all coffee syrup is is sugar and water and flavor.  Imagine the possibilities!  You'll never have to pay 80 cents a shot for this stuff again.  Make your favorite flavor, carry it around in your purse, single-handedly destroy Starbucks.

...no, but seriously. I really dislike Starbucks. It's like the McDonald's of coffee.

Here's a list of suggestions for your favorite syrups.  The pumpkin spice recipe I lifted from a lovely little blog called Miss Make.  Please give her all the credit.  The rest are just adapted simple syrups.  Use your imagination, though.  If you want your coffee to taste like grass and Play-Doh... I'm sure dropping a bit into a simple syrup would be the way to go.

Homemade Pumpkin Spice Syrup (from Miss Make, www.missmake.com)

Ingredients
1 cup water
1 cup sugar
(optional) 1/4 c bourbon
1/2 cup pumpkin puree
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp vanilla (or, a good vanilla bean)

Mix all ingredients in a small saucepan.  Bring to a boil. Make sure all the sugar is dissolved before you leave this alone.  Reduce mixture to a simmer and cook for 20 minutes.

Strain through a fine mesh sieve.  Cool, store in a glass jar or bottle in the refrigerator.

Vanilla Syrup

Ingredients
1 cup water
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
(for french vanilla, use 1/2 teaspoon vanilla and 1/2 teaspoon hazelnut flavor.  Yes, that's all French vanilla is.)


Mix all ingredients in a small saucepan.  Bring to a boil. Make sure all the sugar is dissolved before you leave this alone.  Reduce mixture to a simmer and cook for 20 minutes. Cool, store in a glass jar or bottle in the refrigerator.

Any type of Fruit Syrup (Apple, Cherry, Lycee, raspberry, etc... IMAGINATION.)

Ingredients
1 cup water
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup puree of fruit of choice (stick it in the blender with some water)

Mix all ingredients in a small saucepan. Bring to boil. Make sure all the sugar is dissolved before you leave this alone. Reduce mixture to a simmer and cook for 20 minutes. Strain through a mesh sieve, cool, and store in a jar in the fridge.



...see where I'm going with this?