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It’s summer in Southern California, and my frugal self can’t help but turn on the AC once the loft nears 90 degrees Fahrenheit. In a moment of weakness (I blame the heat), we went to our favorite local coffee shop in Santa Ana last Sunday, to reap the benefits of their AC in lieu of turning ours on. Which also is a confession for: we ordered coffee at a coffee shop, something we haven’t done in a while. Despite the regrets of spending $11 in exchange for two hours of AC time (we stayed until closing hour), we were introduced to a splendid drink, which they call the Frozen Sweet Latte.
The drink comes from a slushie machine, and while $5.50 a glass seems like a steep price, the joys of sipping one of these babies as icy crystals twinkle on your tongue is indescribable. It’s enough to evaporate any heat wave (well, the AC in the shop helped). Regardless, once we had a taste of their medicine, we just knew we had to replicate it, or at least try. Hence, the sharing of a similar, but slightly different, frozen sweet latte recipe. Without a slushie machine, we made up for their textured ice crystals with a more distinct taste of espresso. Here’s how you could avoid paying for coffee, and sit through another hot afternoon in a blazing room.
Makes 6 servings
Things you need:
-
- Blender – You’ll need a blender to mix all this goodness right before serving. Having worked at Jamba Juice for almost two years, a blender was one of the first things to go on our registry. No Annie Banks Mackenzie crying over a blender as a wedding gift here (Father of the Bride fans, anyone?). This is the one we own.
- Scale – I own this one, because it weighs heavy-enough things for bread-making as well. I also like this because I can toggle between grams and ounces. Mike has this one
that he uses for coffee exclusively, which is what we mostly use when measuring coffee bean and water weight. It is especially useful since it has that timer, essential to latte pulls and drip-coffee!
- Grinder – The grinder plays a huge role in the quality of your brew (or espresso, or latte, or what-have-you). We used to just live with the results of a sub-par grinder, until last Christmas, when our gift to each other was a high quality grinder
that has been spewing out delicious cups of Joe ever since.
- Espresso Machine – The La Marzocco Linea Mini
is the machine we use for our espressos. It’s a high quality machine, and the price point reflects it. However, for my frugal readers who happen to buy an espresso drink every day, it will take approximately three years to come out even in terms of money spent on coffee. Just in case you care about the math.
- Freezer safe bowl – Honestly, we just use a glass Tupperware to store the coffee in the freezer. We have a Tupperware set similar to this one.
Ingredients:
- 1 cup of espresso
- 1 cup of milk
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 6 cups of crushed ice
The Process:
- Pull 1 cup of espresso from the espresso machine. We had to pull approximately 4 espresso shots, at 20 grams of freshly ground coffee beans extracted at 25 seconds each shot.
- Pour the espresso in a freezer safe bowl. Add the sugar and mix until the sugar has completely dissolved.
- Add 1/2 a cup of milk.
- Freeze in the freezer for at least 8 hours.
- Thaw slightly in the fridge right before use. We placed it in the fridge for approximately one hour.
- Transfer to a blender with 1/2 cup of milk. Add 6 cups of crushed ice (depending on the consistency you want).
- Blend on high until thoroughly mixed. We still wanted some crushed ice pieces in there.
- Pour into 6 glasses. Sprinkle with freshly ground coffee.
- Enjoy with a metal straw.
The Verdict:
Our version is definitely not as light as theirs, but if you really like the taste of coffee, the flavor stands out more in this version. If you could budget out $5.50 a glass, it’s still worth trying out their slushie machine version at Hopper and Burr. Really, the texture is better than ours! The owner, Severson, is doing other pretty neat stuff worth checking out too.
