the cheap way

My friend J loves her some Starbucks.  LOVES it.  But to me, their coffee is bitter.   She can drink their strong stuff where I have to my Starbucks loaded with sugar and chocolate, and then… YUM.  I really do love their mochas.  But I do not like their $4 price tag.  Good thing the nearest Starbucks is 15 miles away or I’d have raging internal battles every day over whether or not to spend too much money on some ground beans, water and sugar.

So I decided to make my own mochas.  I first tried adding Hershey’s syrup to my coffee and milk but that was gross.  So I tried the chocolate coffee creamers from the grocery store but they had a weird aftertaste and didn’t taste that great anyway.  Then I decided to mess with the hot chocolate recipe on the Hershey’s Cocoa box and voila!  A mocha that tastes nearly identical to the Starbucks kind.

And now I will share it with you:

• Make your regular coffee extra strong.  And you don’t need a whole lot because about half your cup will be milk.
• Heat approximately half your coffee cup’s worth of milk in a saucepan on your stove.  This is how much the Starbucks people put in but I prefer a little less milk in mine.
• Mix equal parts Hershey’s Cocoa with sugar in the bottom of your coffee cup.  I like 3 teaspoons of each.  Then add a dash of salt.
• Pour your coffee over the cocoa mixture and stir.
• Add your heated milk (I like mine right before it gets to the boiling point) and stir again.

I’m telling you, this is YUMMY.  If you don’t like the taste then try a different coffee next time.  My Dunkin’ Donuts Dunkin’ Dark tastes great but my Eight O’Clock Coffee Decaffeinated Original does not.  Or next time add more cocoa and sugar or put less milk in.

And this also isn’t too many calories.  Three teaspoons of cocoa + three teaspoons of sugar = 55 calories.  I didn’t count the milk because you all should be drinking milk anyway.

Now go make yourself a yummy mocha.