Caramel and Vanilla Bean Coffee Syrup

I’m just going to throw this out there… I love me some caramel and vanilla bean coffee syrup! Yes, I’m one of those “coffee people” and yes I have numerous coffee machines at my house. Generally I don’t put sugar in my coffee because I’ve realized that adding sugar is just a bad habit that I don’t want to get into. Yes, I do like coffee a little bit more with sugar but I just can’t justify drinking sugar on a daily basis.

Although I don’t drink sugary coffee drinks regularly, there are times I find a sweet coffee drink after dinner really delicious! I also know soooooo many people that have non-diary creamer at home and I absolutely LOATH that stuff! It is right up there with Cool-Whip on my “never ingesting again” list. Essentially non-dairy creamer will give you a healthy dose of trans fats, preservatives, GMO oils, and artificial flavors in your coffee. Thankfully, this DIY syrup is really easy to make, way more cost effective even with the use of a real vanilla bean, and uses a sugar that isn’t refined (Coconut Palm Sugar).

Here I go hand modeling again…. you know I’m just looking for a hand modeling contract… right? 😉

 

With my background as a pastry chef I’m familiar with this little thing we like to call “simple syrup.” Basically it is just sugar water that can be flavored to put into cake layers to make them moister and tastier. When I realized coconut palm sugar tasted just like caramel in liquid form I knew it would make a great simple syrup. I don’t have any real use for simple syrup at home, but being a coffee lover I thought it would make a  tasty syrup to put into coffee when I wanted a sweet treat. I scored some vanilla beans for a great price at the grocery store, so it seemed natural to put a vanilla bean pod in the syrup to take it to the next level. The best part…. the ingredients are quality, real ingredients that are way more cost effective then buying non-dairy creamer or store bought coffee syrup (which also contain questionable ingredients).

I know you might be thinking has she lost her damn mind? Did she just suggest I put a real vanilla bean in coffee syrup? YES! Here’s the reason why… one vanilla bean is going to run you about $6-8. I only used about 1/4 of a bean in this recipe which will give you enough syrup to flavor about 4 drinks. If you used the whole entire bean and quadrupled the recipe you could get about 16 drinks out of the batch (1 Tbsp per serving). Here’s the thing though, you can use the bean more then once and still get a decent flavor from just throwing the scraped out pod into the container you are keeping your syrup in. I threw my scraped out pods into my glass jar, and I’m going to transfer it to the next batch I make. So essentially you could get about a month’s worth of flavoring out of just one bean. If you really wanted to stretch it, you could use even less in each batch because there are TONS of little beans in every pod. When I compare that $6 bean to all the flavored drinks one person could purchase at a high end coffee shop in a month or two, it makes the $6 seem like a really frugal choice. Yes, you’d still have to purchase the Coconut Palm Sugar which runs about $5 a bag, but even $11 doesn’t seem like such an investment when you look at the price of just 1 coffee from Starbuck’s (a grande iced coffee is $2.60). Plus, you will never get this kind of flavor from the syrups coffee shops and grocery stores sell!

 

 

Making the syrup only takes about 5 minutes. After you cook your syrup just transfer it to a glass jar, put a lid on it, and enjoy it everyday in your favorite coffee (or on occasion for a special treat). It doesn’t get more delicious then this rich, aromatic, flavorful syrup. I’m telling you, one whiff of this stuff and you will never look at bottled syrup at the grocery store again!

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