Salted Caramel Mocha

Starring... Caramel Sauce, Cocoa, and Rock Salt

Anyone who knows us well enough knows we’re not huge fans of Starbucks. We’re not opposed to patronizing them from time to time, and I even used to work there. Any of you loyal fans (or employees - sorry Elise!) out there that may be reading this, I understand they must be doing something right or there wouldn’t be a billion of them on the planet. However, I’ve found them to be slightly disappointing over the years, and we’ve had more luck with smaller lines of coffee. So when I tried the Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate and thought that it came up lacking (tasted more like a doughnut than salt, caramel, or hot chocolate), I knew we could do better making it at home.

Our coffee of choice to have at home is Café Vita. We’re decaf drinkers (one reason we have a difficult time finding good coffee) and Café Vita’s Novacella Decaf is a favorite. We filled up our little stove-top espresso pot, and got started.

Filling Up On Cafe Vita

If you’ve never used a stove-top espresso maker, we recommend it. The one we have now is aluminum (I know, I know!), and we want to replace it with a stainless steel model soon. At any rate, it’s a simple concept. You fill the base with water, the filter insert with coffee, screw it all together, and set it over high heat. The water boils and percolates up, filling the upper chamber with rich coffee. Simple. Delicious.

Fun Little Contraption

We chose Ghiradelli’s cocoa powder (very good), used the rock salt we always keep on hand for cooking (delicious - inexpensive and SO much better than regular table salt), and Torani Caramel Sauce. We would have preferred Ghiradelli Caramel, but it couldn’t be found at the store we were at. Torani is a decent second, but not as good as it could have been.

At any rate, Torani or not, the result was a Salted Caramel Mocha (scoop of cocoa, squeeze of caramel, couple of twists of salt, half coffee, half steamed milk) that was much better than what I got at the chain. And besides, I got to tip my husband instead.

It's Gonna Be Delicious

Tags: Beverages, Coffee, Desserts

This entry was posted on November 15th, 2008 and is filed under Recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.