Four Ingredients That Will Change Your Home Coffee Drinks

Hello there. Now a couple of weeks ago, we did a video talking about four drinks you can make at home that will kind of level up your home coffee drinking experience if you are someone who likes coffee on perhaps the sweeter side of things. We did a cereal milk latte, we did like this kind of Arnold Palmer sparkling thing, we did a shaken vanilla latte, and I am totally forgetting what the last one we did was. Anyways, those were very fun, you all seemed to like that, so today I wanted to do kind of a different take on that same kind of genre of video. Today we're going to be making four syrups that you can very easily add to your kitchen and keep in your coffee arsenal. These are flavor combinations that I think are pretty interesting and that go well with both coffee and tea and really any sort of beverage you want to make at home, including mocktails or cocktails if that's your thing. So we have four syrups to make today, let's just get started. Now syrups are a very easy thing to make at home. If you start out with a simple syrup base, you can pretty much do any flavor combination you want. They're also really accessible from like a tool standpoint because all you really need is a pot of some sort, you also need a heating source of some kind, this is off don't worry, and then you need some sugar, some water, and whatever flavors you want to incorporate. So all of our syrups today are going to have a simple syrup base. It's a very foundational syrup, the meaning of it is in the word. It is a simple syrup, it is simply a portion of sugar with a portion of water. Now we are going to be doing a two to one simple syrup, meaning it's going to be two parts sugar to one part water. Now because this is just kind of a proportion, you can really scale this to be how much syrup you want versus how little syrup you want. We're going to keep most of our recipes pretty straightforward today, so you can start with the ratios that I am doing here, but if you want to change them for different amounts, go for it. Let me give you the rundown of the flavor combinations we are making today. We will be making an orange and cardamom syrup, we'll be making a lavender earl grey syrup, a cinnamon clove syrup, and a rose and raspberry syrup. You know I'm down to business when I have a notebook with me because that means I'm like somewhat more organized than I usually am, so that means the videos go by pretty efficiently. Not very efficiently, but at least pretty efficiently. Let's get this heating up and let's get our simple syrup started. Simple syrup started, that's a fun one. I am starting to heat this, this takes a while, so just bear with me while this warms up. Let's grab our sugar. Now there are many, many different types of sugar. There is all sorts of levels of processing and refinement that goes into sugar, there's all sorts of molasses content that's in sugar, there's all sorts of really interesting varieties, and those different varieties will have different flavor impacts on your final syrup. So we're going to be using two types of sugar today. These are pretty accessible sugars, they're also pretty basic sugars, however if you want to mess around with different types of sugar, go for it. I think there's some really, really interesting darker sugars like muscovado sugar, there's lots of various brown sugars, there's a whole bunch of stuff out there. We're going to be using a just a pure cane sugar, so like a white sugar, it's pretty like basic I would say. And we also have a demerara sugar, so this is less refined, this tends to have a little bit of a deeper, darker sweetness, and for some of our flavor pairings, that's going to lend itself really, really well. Okay now, so for our first recipe, the orange, orange and cardamom, I can remember what I planned today. The orange and cardamom syrup, we're going to be using demerara sugar. As I mentioned before, this is a game of ratios. We are doing two to one. I'm going to start with 200 grams of demerara sugar, and into the pot we go. Half of 200 grams is 100. I'm using 200 grams or milliliters of water. Water in. Now I'm going to keep this on kind of a low temperature, and we're going to let that sugar start to dissolve. I also recommend having some sort of stirring implement. We want to make sure that sugar doesn't like burn to the bottom. Just need it to dissolve. If we just let this heat and dissolve, and then kind of simmer until it reached a syrup consistency, we would have a very nice, versatile, simple syrup. However, we want to add flavor to this. As this begins to dissolve, I'm going to add some stuff. These right here that I have are whole cardamom pods. We're going to be essentially steeping these in the syrup to kind of infuse it with their flavor. Cardamom is a really, really, really, really lovely spice. If you would like to make your life a little bit easier later on, you can always steep things in tea bags. If you have these kind of like fillable tea bags for loose leaf tea, you could throw your spices in there, dunk it in, that would work very well. However, I don't really like making things easier for myself, and I kind of like the full immersion of the entire cardamom pod in there, so five grams of cardamom pods into our syrup. Now we're also adding a balance of some citrus, so I have a good bit of oranges here. I have five slices. I did not weigh these, so whole slice, rind, and all just kind of goes in there. Now these are going to let off some liquid, but not like too much as to throw off the proportion of the syrup. Now you can use really whatever oranges you like. I'm using a blend of both blood oranges and caracara oranges. Those tend to be a little bit sweeter, and I don't know, I like that in a syrup. The longer you steep it, the more flavor is going to be imparted into the syrup, so I like to go for a pretty good long while. You don't want to bring your syrup necessarily to a boil. It's gonna do some bad things to all the flavors you have going on, but once that sugar is all dissolved, once you have a smooth syrup, you can reduce it to a lower heat, to kind of a simmering temperature. I would give it about 10 to 15 minutes of just like constant simmering. Tends to thicken up these syrups pretty well, so as long as you're not at a rolling boil, you can kind of let this be. This is gonna steep together, it's gonna simmer. Keep an eye on it, make sure nothing weird is happening, but you're pretty good to let this be for a bit. I'll be back soon. Okay, so we have had a good amount of simmering time. My house is currently full of the just delicious combination of both cardamom spice and orange. It smells great, but it's time to strain this all out. And again, a lot of this is about practice. These times are just kind of like estimates or starting points for you. A lot of this is going to be like learning how you like your syrup consistency and also your intensity of flavor. I have something we can strain into and a sieve. Let's remove all those big bits that we have in there. As far as straining things go, that could have definitely gone far worse. So as you can see, a lot of that juice was sucked out of those oranges. You can kind of see some like even caramelization and like, not caramelization, candying. You can see some kind of candying happening on these oranges. The cardamom pods have opened up a bit. You can compost or discard these, or if you have a reason to use them, use them as well. Now we're left with a syrup that is kind of a dark, very dark, like almost red in color. That's because of the blood orange juice. I think this makes for a very pretty looking syrup and it smells awesome. So let's get it bottled. You can grab these little syrup bottles from Ikea. Pretty cheap. These tend to be perfect for storing syrups at home. I'm not going to show you me pouring this. It's not going to be good. And that is just about the perfect amount to store in one of these bottles. You now have orange cardamom syrup. All right. So now that we have talked through this once, the rest of these are going to be pretty fast because again, we are building off of the same base here. We are going to do our earl gray lavender syrup next. And for this one, I am actually going to start with cane sugar. This is like just a white cane sugar. It is a very neutral starting point. So for these much lighter flavors, these florals, these very tea-like flavors, I think this is a much better base than Demerara, which might begin to overpower some of those softer, just lighter flavors. It's all about just matching your sugar to what you're putting in it. 200 grams in and then 100 gram of water. 100 grams. In case it isn't totally obvious, I am filming this much later in the day than I usually do. And so the, uh, the brain cells and the neurons aren't firing the same way they usually do. As the syrup says, we're adding two ingredients. I have about four grams of earl gray tea here. This is a very nice quality earl gray. You can use whatever you like, but the higher quality of tea you use, the better quality of flavor you're going to get in the syrup. In we go. And I also have four grams of lavender here. In we go. Just like we did before, we need to let the sugar dissolve. Then we need to bring it down to a simmer in order to let those flavors really steep into the syrup without burning them or damaging them. So I will see you in like, in like 10 minutes. All right, we are fully dissolved. We have more delicious smells coming into the house right now. I think we're about ready. Well, definitely ready to pull this off heat. Let's strain it out. I'm doing it carefully now. Nice. Much better execution. Once more, we have an amber colored syrup here that smells delicious. Remember, this is lavender and earl gray, so it's very light and floral and tea-like. There's a lot of delicate flavors in this and it's going to go really, really nicely in some coffee drinks. Now you need another bottle. Very nice. We're good to go. This third syrup we're making is a spiced syrup. We're going to be using primarily cinnamon and cloves in it. So this is kind of going to be a richer, like darker syrup. It's going to be very comforting and wintry. It's going to go very well in those hot coffee drinks and lattes. And because, because we're doing a spiced syrup, I'm going to go back to our demerara sugar. Remember, this is a little bit of a darker like sweetness to it. It goes very, very, very nicely with kind of baking and warming spices. Kind of my rule of thumb, at least beginning with syrups, is that if I'm going for what I would consider kind of like darker flavors, like things that are more associated perhaps with baking or chocolate, then I like to use a darker sugar as well. I think it complements it very nicely. However, if I'm using kind of like those lighter, like more floral flavors or fruity flavors or anything like that, I like to use a lighter sugar that's not going to interact or kind of like disrupt those flavor combinations as much. But again, it's all personal preference. 200 grams in, you know this by now, 100 grams of water. Oh, we are already kind of up to temp here. So begin stirring, let it begin to dissolve. Now I like to use whole cinnamon sticks for this, just so you're not having to deal with any sort of like ground cinnamon. It's kind of tricky with syrups to incorporate ground cinnamon. So I have in total 20 grams in weight, but I have broken up two cinnamon sticks here. So four pieces, two sticks. I'll just kind of dump this all in here. Fun fact, if any of you remember from like two years ago, I did a video where I recreated James Hoffman's pumpkin spice latte recipe. And I used a whole bunch of spices from a brand called Spice House. They do very high quality sourcing of spices. I still use that brand to this day because of doing that video. Thank you, James. Next I have whole cloves here. Again, we are just steeping spices. Steeping spices in syrup. And they're very, very nice. Dump this in. That was about five grams in total of those whole cloves. And then we stir and we dissolve and we steep and we wait and we strain in that order. So your house is going to smell like wassail and Christmas and that is lovely. And I will see you in 10 minutes. Okay, now that your house smells like the holidays in the middle of February, it's time to strain this out. Another syrup. In we go. Delicious. Our final flavor combination is one that I really, really love. And I feel like we're really entering the season for. It is in fact, rose and raspberry. If you will remember, I feel like this is like we're in like class right now. If we're using floral and fruit-like flavors, what sugar are we using? And then it's Jeopardy music. And then I answer that it's white cane sugar. If only we were actually in class and not separated by a screen. It would smell a lot better. This video certainly would. I can tell you that much. So 200 to 100. Okay, so our first ingredient is going to be 11 grams of this whole rose tea. This is just like dried roses. You can find this at Onyx Coffee Lab. You can also find like a multitude of other rose teas around. This is one that I really like. Now, this is not sponsored by Onyx Coffee Lab. This isn't a product placement per se. This is just a tea that I have around my house and I really, really like using. Because these are like whole rose, uh, like little, what's the word? I guess flowers is the right word. I almost called them like nubbins. Because these are whole rose flowers, there's a lot of tea leaf there. There's a lot of like flavor to infuse. It's very nice. In we go. It also just looks so pretty. As these hydrate, they're just absolutely gorgeous. You will get them stuck in your stirrer most likely. Now I have about 70 grams of raspberries. You could use more if you like. Raspberry is a very strong, very distinct flavor. And also because I'm using fresh strawberries, strawberries, raspberries, because I'm using fresh raspberries, these are going to give off quite a bit of juice as they kind of stew. Like there is going to be like a stewing element to this syrup. Now we need to let this just kind of marinate together. I will see you in 10 minutes. Okay, the sun is coming out and I think we have very adequately stewed our raspberries. So what's next? We strain. All right. And once more, as you can see, those raspberries on the rose gave up a good bit of their like juice and color. And so we have a very beautiful red pink syrup here. We now have four very distinctly different, very versatile and very delicious syrups to work with. We have over here, your orange cardamom syrup. This is a nice spiced, but lightly citrus syrup. This is very good for both ice and hot coffee drinks. We have over here, this lavender or gray syrup. I recommend this in ice drinks. I also recommend it in tea. This is a very, very nice sweetener for tea or in like homemade Italian sodas. Highly recommend this one. Then we have our cinnamon and clove syrup. This is a very spiced, very warming, very like just holiday like syrup. This is good for hot drinks. I also recommend it in like mochas, especially. This is a very nice kind of split if you want to do half chocolate and half something kind of like a spiced syrup like this. And then we have our rose and raspberry syrup. Again, this is good in hot or cold drinks. I like it particularly in cold drinks. I think that raspberry is kind of a cooler flavor in my personal opinion. I also really, really like this one in Italian sodas. But again, if you want to use these for mocktails or really anything that needs both sweetness and the addition of a flavor, go for it. These are very versatile. And personally, I think I'm going to make myself a nice latte right now. I have milk and ice. I think I'm going to like shop my syrups here. I think I'm going to go for this really nice raspberry rose. I'm just going to kind of eyeball this. That was a more than healthy glug of syrup. Now our espresso. And now we're able to both stir and enjoy. I'm realizing how much of my syrup I just put in here. Maybe don't do that. Maybe use less or don't. I don't particularly care. Anyways, this was your at home basics for making infused simple syrups. They're very easy. And again, you can do this with pretty much any ingredient you want to and just add these to your arsenal. They're very easy to make. They're very fun. I will leave recipes for everything down below. If you have any combinations of syrups that you like making at home, feel free to let me know. I am always in the market for making different types that I haven't made in the past. In the meantime, I am Morgan Drinks Coffee and you will find me here on YouTube once a week, plus some YouTube shorts. Additionally, you can find me on TikTok or Instagram almost every single day. This was a lot of fun. I have a very like bountiful yield at the end of this video, which is very exciting. I'm going to go enjoy my rose and raspberry latte. We'll see you all next time. Bye everyone!