Salted Caramel Mocha

Hello friends :-)

I'm not sure if you guys know (well you should) but I absolutely love Salted Caramel flavoured stuff and I waited a year for the Salted Caramel Mocha to be back at Starbucks and was absolutely thrilled to be able to buy it again recently. Even though I like it quite a bit, Starbucks is known for being really over-priced and perhaps we are all really paying just for the brand itself. Plus, their drinks have a whole ton of sugar - much more than normal good coffee and we aren't really drinking coffee but coffee-flavoured sugar water. 

I'm not hating on the coffee chain because I'd still patronize them (especially during the Christmas season - ahh I can't wait for their peppermint mochas) but on days where I feel like I don't mind compensating on the ambience and atas-feeling and well, not taking a mainstream hipster Starbucks photo to put on Instagram, I can make my own Salted Caramel Mocha at home! :-) (confession: I still posted a photo of the mocha I made on Instagram whoops) Also great for when Starbucks stops selling this seasonal drink since it's not on their official menu. 

So yes - below are the photos of the actual drinks I had the pleasure of trying on blessed days where I have time for breakfast with friends before Options while the collaged photo at the start of this post are my recreations of them! I honestly think they look quite alike - in terms of taste too :-)

The real deal from Starbucks - Salted Caramel Mocha (hot!) 

Salted Caramel Mocha Frappe (I won't be showing you a recipe for their frappes though, I'll just be showing you the cold version of the mocha) 

The great thing about making them yourself is that it's much much much cheaper (honestly, two cups of that at Starbucks is around the same cost as buying the ingredients, which will last you for a lot more cups - at least 15 more cups - of home-made goodness). Plus, by making it yourself, you can control the amount of sugar you put in your coffee and make your mocha the way you like it. If you don't drink coffee, you can just use hot chocolate too or if you don't like mocha (coffee + chocolate), you can just have normal coffee. The possibilities are endless :-) 

The recipe is actually pretty self-explanatory and simple but here it is anyway: 

SALTED CARAMEL MOCHA (HOT & COLD) 

Ingredients: 

1. Caramel sauce/ syrup

2. Whipped cream

3. Sea salt

4. Coffee (I'm using instant coffee powder, which includes sugar and milk)

5. Chocolate powder (or just use milo) 

6. Hot water

7. Ice (if you like your mocha cold) 

Hot Recipe

1. Make your coffee - or mocha - as you would normally (some people like to add milk and what not) 

2. Add a teaspoon of caramel syrup/ sauce 

3. Add your hot water and stir well

4. Squeeze on as much whipped cream as you want! :-) The more the merrier!

5. Drizzle on your caramel syrup 

6. Sprinkle your sea salt on

And there you have it :-) A warm lovely salted caramel mocha, perfect for a rainy day indoors!

Cold Recipe

1. Follow steps 1-3 of the hot recipe, but make your coffee more concentrated as we'll be adding more water in the form of ice later

2. Prepare a cup full of ice 

(oh and if you're wondering why my cup is from Starbucks - Wang You's Starbucks stalker gave it to us)

3. Pour your hot mocha/ coffee into the cupful of ice or pour your ice into your hot mocha/ coffee (it might be smarted to do the latter)

(this time, I added milk into my coffee, which explains the lovely colour gradient in the photo you see above. Unfortunately, as you might be able to tell, I made a mess and spilled my coffee everywhere) 

Cleaned up my mess :-) 

4. Squeeze on as much whipped cream as desired

5. Drizzle on the caramel syrup and add your sea salt!

And there you have it :-) An ice cold refreshing salty and sweet drink! 

If you're looking for the frappe recipe (i.e. ice blended), I didn't try it out but I think you should just blend your coffee and ice in a blender before adding the whipped cream and whatnot. 

Starbucks drinks are actually really simple to make and it tastes almost the same, as long as you make your coffee extremely sweet and be generous about the whipped cream and syrup and other stuff. According to my friends who take the Options on the alchemy of coffee, the coffee beans that Starbucks use aren't really of good quality so if you make your own and if you're a real coffee drinker who is actually able to tell the difference between good and bad coffee, I guess you could make your drink even better than the ones they serve you at Starbucks.

Have fun and oh my I need to learn how to make their peppermint mochas :-)