Maple Mocha

I seem to get a lot of questions about how to sweeten coffee on a real food diet…so I’ve finally decided to address it in an official recipe. For starters PLEASE throw away your Splenda or other imitation sweeteners. I am begging you! :) Even though our family rarely does sugar anymore I would much rather have regular white table sugar (that has been around for thousands of years) over something that was (relatively recently) invented in a lab just to imitate sugar. Enough said about that.

As you’ve probably gathered from the title this is not a recipe for just plain ol’ coffee because that is just not how I roll. I am a mocha girl and always have been. My victim of choice used to be a white chocolate mocha to be exact, and I don’t even want to think about what the ingredients might be in one of those. But just in case I could convince one more person to stop ordering them I just got off the phone with Starbucks…

Starbucks white chocolate syrup: sugar, condensed skim milk, sweetened condensed skim milk, coconut oil, cocoa butter, natural flavors, salt, potassium sorbate, monoglycerides

Okay, well at least I can (almost) pronounce everything…I guess that is a positive, but what is the point in consuming a large dose of all that stuff when it could be so much simpler (and cheaper) if you make it at home!? Now if I am not at home my new drink to order is a latté (which is just plain espresso and milk) with a little honey added to sweeten it. And as you can see from the recipe if you want to make these mochas at home it is necessary to have an espresso maker. I have the simplest espresso machine imaginable, and it has worked wonderfully for almost a decade.

Now if you are one of those that likes to get creative please know that the cocoa/maple syrup combination in this recipe can be used as a “chocolate sauce” for just about anything. You can drizzle it on some ice cream, or I even use it to make both cold and hot chocolate milk for my girls. I bet it would be good mixed into regular coffee too. So enjoy!

Maple Mocha

Course: Drinks

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Servings: 1

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Ingredients

• 1/2 teaspoon unsweetened cocoa powder (this recipe will work with regular, but I think it's sooooo much better with the "special dark" variety!)
• 1 teaspoon pure maple syrup honey would work as an alternative
• 1 shot espresso
• ¾ cup milk

Instructions

1. Heat 3/4 cup milk in a glass measuring cup in the microwave (for about 2 minutes) or by using a milk frother.
2. While the milk is heating up, stir together the cocoa and maple syrup until the mixture looks "wet."
3. Pour the hot espresso and milk into the chocolate mixture…and voila! You have a “mocha.”