Guilt-free Ginger Bread Latte

Posted by Alex Hardie on Dec 20, 2011 in Food | 7 comments

Hoping for a fancy new coffee machine for Christmas? Maybe you’re just in need of something a little more exciting to drink during this cold winter? Whether you will get your coffee machine or not, or whether you have to grind your own beans yourself; I have just the thing for you – a guilt-free ginger bread latte. It’s tasty, it’s delicious and it’ll bring you the flavour of the festive season in a cup.

I’d first tried one of these at Costa. And, I’ll be honest, I found it sickly sweet – great if you like your drinks like that, but I don’t. It’s sugariness is down to the syrup which I can only guess is sugar concentrated and then, with somebody concentrating in it really hard, concentrated again. It’s sooo sweet. So I went scouting for a less sweet recipe that let me replicate the experience at home – and keep my teeth.

With a little experimentation, this is what I came up with:

Ginger Bread Latte

Ingredients:

• 1 x double espresso (single if you don’t like your coffee too strong)
• ¼ tsp ground cinnamon
• ¼ tsp ground ginger
• ¼ tsp vanilla extract (make it half a tsp if you like, but I find it the vanilla too overpowering)
• ¼ tsp ground nutmeg
• ½ pint skimmed milk

Method:

1. Steam your milk using your coffee machine’s steamer (if you don’t have one of these just heat the milk in a pan or the microwave – latte purists will have me for this but I’ll make no apologies for showing you the simple way if you don’t have the fancy way available to you)
2. Add all the spices to the milk and stir well
3. Make your espresso according to your machine’s instructions
4. Add the espresso to the milk mixture
5. Sweeten with brown sugar to taste (this is the guilty pleasure of the guilt free drink!)

Trust me…it’s delicious!