Making Cafe Style Drinks at Home (without fancy equipment, vegan)

I feel like I only recently really started to appreciate the beauty behind homemade cafe style drinks. It's just been my favorite past time making these and testing out new ideas. And so for the purpose of this video, I took it upon myself to create one fancy drink per day for a week straight. Although I did end up filming more than a week actually. Yeah, the schedule gets a bit confusing towards the end. But anyway, there's a lot of ideas to go through. So I hope you enjoy. And I also got to mention that we're sponsored today by Squarespace. This is one of my favorites from this week. Iced Mexican chocolate. Though I'm guessing iced Mexican style cacao is probably a better description for this since we're not using actual chocolate. Grab a small saucepan and add the following. Unsweetened cacao powder, pinch of salt, bit of cinnamon, and a pinch or two pinches of chili powder. Turn the heat to medium and pour in a half a cup of the non-dairy milk. Whisk it all up thoroughly until smooth. You don't want the mix to become piping hot. Just slightly above room temp is enough to help the cacao fully dissolve. And also add some sweetener of choice. I went for maple syrup. Turn off the heat and then pour in the remaining half a cup of cold milk. So now the cacao should be somewhere between room and cold temp. It's like the perfect mix between a cozy and a refreshing drink experience because you have those warm flavors from the cacao and the spices and then you're combining that with the ice cubes and it's the best of both worlds. It's really good. On Monday I did lots of writing, um, you know, for the special ominous project. I cannot really say much more than that other than it is coming along nicely and I can't wait for you to see it. I also prepared a cold brew that day. You know, I thought I was being really really clever by roasting up some almonds, chopping them up, adding them to a big jar filled with water and ground coffee and letting everything soak overnight. But the result was just okay. Like, it faintly, faintly tasted of roasted almond. But then I realized that if I'm gonna be adding milk in the end anyway, then I could also just go for almond milk that uses roasted almonds and maybe even add like a drop of almond extract and then you would have the same, if not a much better effect. So that's that. However, I did not want to accept defeat and so I tested out a second recipe. This one's inspired by a comment I found on reddit. Molasses milk. Ever since the making of my evil gingerbread cookies back in December, I hadn't gotten much use out of this jar of molasses and so this just seemed like a perfect opportunity to use some of that up. In a small saucepan, place a tablespoon of molasses, a small amount of cinnamon, salt, and vanilla, plus some non-dairy milk. I'm once again using soy milk here. I actually think it was a mix between soy and oat, both of them being barista style milks, which is why I was able to create foam by just whisking this thoroughly over medium heat for a couple minutes. This was just very cozy. It was a really nice change up to your usual coffee, matcha, and chai. But yeah, I feel like I should add the disclaimer that this does have a slight licorice taste to it. On Tuesday night, I had the most terrifying shoot of my life where I basically had to photograph six recipes all at the same time. I think- I think we must have finished at like 10 p.m. and once again, a huge thank you to Nina for helping me get through this. Just bless her, seriously. Wednesday night was movie night. I made a super simple lime and mint tea. This may not be the most unique drink idea, but it's just really good, and I had all the ingredients at home, so yeah. I mean, we could also call this a hot mojito, hot version mojito. I feel like that's a very cafe thing to do anyway, to give everything the quirkiest of names. So first, I divided the juice of a lime between two heatproof glasses, and then I cut a second lime into slices and divided those slices between the two glasses as well. Then I added lots of fresh mint leaves, and in order to, you know, stay true to the mojito theme, I added some brown sugar, about one teaspoon per cup, and then I poured over hot water. Cute! My friend Lottie came over to watch this pretty dark romance indie film. Lottie's actually never seen it, which was just very fun for me, as someone who's seen Twilight more times than they like to admit. I do partially blame that on the fact that I made an entire recipe video about Twilight once, and it's due to this day one of my favorite, favorite things I've ever done. I will link that video down below in case you've not seen it yet. I also went ahead and prepared Thursday's drink that night, another cold brew. It's a cold brew Earl Grey this time. To be honest, I'm not the biggest black tea drinker out there, but I read somewhere that if you let the tea steep overnight with cold water, it won't be as intense of a flavor or as bitter of a flavor, and so I used the tea to make a very fancy iced blueberry London fog. So you got three components here, the overnight tea, the blueberry mixture, and some froth milk. So the berries are best prepared about 20 minutes before you plan on drinking your drink. To a small jar or bowl, simply add the frozen berries, plus some sweetener of choice. I went for coconut blossom syrup. And set that aside to thaw a little for 15 to 30 minutes. Once defrosted, go ahead and mash the berries a little. Now on to the frothy milk, which gives you that nice cloudy, foggy look that we want. I couldn't seem to find my milk frother in the moment, and so I grabbed my french press instead. First, I tried just frothing up the cold milk, which worked okay, but I would recommend to heat the milk first. Just a little bit above room temperature should be fine, and then the foaming works much better. Set the foam aside to just cool back to room temp for a few minutes. Nice, now grab your cup and add the following. A few tablespoons of the sweetened blueberries, some ice, about a half a cup of the earl grey, or more to taste, and top that off with the foam. This is such a fun and unique tasting drink. The earl grey has almost like a florally taste to it that matches the berries really nicely. I would argue that coffee, matcha, and spiced chai make up the holy trinity of cozy cafe drinks. And so for Friday's recipe, I thought of putting two of these together, matcha and chai, creating a spiced matcha latte. Okay, first add about three quarters of a cup of the non-dairy milk to a small saucepan. Turn the heat up all the way, and then take it off the heat just before it starts boiling. Add one bag of sweet spiced chai. Allow the tea to steep for about five minutes. I pretty quickly put it back on the stove, actually, so it wouldn't get cold. Just make sure your heat is turned off or on In the meantime, grab a cup and add a half a teaspoon of matcha powder, followed by a fourth of a cup of hot water. Now grab a milk frother, a little whisk, or one of those special wooden matcha whisks, and mix this up thoroughly until there's no clumps left. Then remove the tea bag from the milk. Feel free to add some sweetener here, but depending on which type of milk you're using, sometimes vegan milks can be quite sweet on their own, so this might not be necessary. Next, optional but recommended step, grab the milk frother again and froth up the steeped hot tea milk. This way you can also get rid of any weird chunks that may have started to form as the milk was sitting. Yeah, now pour this over the matcha mix. My mug here is so gigantic that I had to add a little bit more full milk, but there you go. Friday, I got ready for a little weekend getaway. I hadn't been to Hamburg in so long. I hadn't taken any days off in so long, it feels like, so this was this was needed. On Monday, I gave infused cold brew another try. You know, someone on Instagram sent me their recipe for cacao nib cold brew. I did slightly adapt their ratios here to suit my taste buds. So first, Maddy says to grind up some coffee beans, though with any coffee recipes, that is an optional step. You can just use already ground coffee. I transferred the ground coffee to a big jar, and right here, I should have added the cacao nibs, but I added them in later. I then poured over 100ml of hot water, which may seem counterintuitive when making cold brew, but Maddy suggested this method, so I wanted to try that for myself. I gave this a quick stir and waited for around 30 seconds before pouring over the remaining cold water. Then I realized I'd forgotten the cacao nibs, and so I mixed them in here as well. The message also suggests to rinse the coffee filter with a bit of hot water first. I've tried that before, because I know people say this gets rid of the filter's papery flavor. Maybe my taste buds aren't that evolved, but I don't taste a difference. Then I put together my drink. Ice first, then about half or three quarters of cold brew, and then the rest vegan milk. I then also dusted over a bit of cacao powder to be fancy. If it's too bitter for you, feel free to sweeten this. So yeah, it really depends on your ingredients, and once again, your taste buds. This definitely does taste like cacao nibs, which I like. I do want to add that cacao nib flavor might not be for everyone. So, for a much more simple cold brew idea, that is still worth mentioning. Ice, plus cold brew, plus chocolate oat milk. Alrighty, that is it for today's video. Feel free to leave me with a comment telling me your favorite cozy or ice drink idea. Also, big thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring today's video. Bring your creative ideas to life by building a cool looking website, coming up with your own domain name and claiming that one, building a fun logo. You can do all this using their easy to navigate all-in-one platform. Choose from a wide range of beautifully and professionally designed website templates. It's really easy to make these templates into your own. No website building experience is required for that, and if you need any help along the way, their 24-hour award-winning customer service will be there for you. For a free trial, go to squarespace.com slash Mina of Rome and use code Mina of Rome to get 10% off your first purchase of a new site or domain. Hope you have a good rest of your day. Bye!