Turning My Kitchen into an Autumn Cafe 🍂 5 cozy fall drink recipes

I love cafes all year round but there's something about going to a coffee shop in the fall that is just especially comforting and nostalgic and I wanted to try to recreate that feeling at home with my own autumn cafe menu. I have five different drink recipes to share with you today. Some of them are more classic fall drinks with like very warm comforting flavors. Others are more crisp and refreshing but all in all I feel like this is my ideal menu that I would serve at my own autumn cafe. Please be warned this is a cat cafe so there will be a cat present. We're going to get started with some hot apple chai but first I want to take a quick moment to hear from today's sponsor. No matter what projects are going on in my home there's always some kind of mess to clean up which is why I'm happy to be partnering with Shark for today's video. One of my favorite things about the Shark Transformer is that it's three vacuums in one so I can move from floors to furniture and hard to reach spaces without stopping to switch vacuums. Whenever I need to vacuum under the couch or the bed or any furniture I convert to the stick. It's perfect for vacuuming in tight spaces and the headlights illuminate dust and debris that can be easy to miss in the dark. I like to switch to the handheld for cleaning furniture and any hard to reach spots in the house. I especially love the pet hair attachment for cleaning Obie's hair off the couch and the crevice tool is great for detailing all over the house. I love the Transformer because it combines all these different cleaning tools into one so I can stay in the flow and not get distracted by switching tools. If you'd like to find out more about the Transformer you can click the link in my description or scan the QR code on the screen. Thank you to Shark for sponsoring this video. This recipe is like a drink and simmer pot in one. It smells so good as it cooks on the stove. We're going to be simmering apple cider with masala chai spices so you have a little bit of this tart sweetness from the apple and this really comforting cozy flavor of all the chai spices. To a saucepan I'm adding crushed cardamom, cloves, and peppercorns as well as some fresh ginger and vanilla. Then I'm adding water, apple cider, and a cinnamon stick. We'll bring everything up to a low boil then reduce the heat and let it simmer for a while to let the flavors infuse. Next I'm adding black tea and removing it from the heat to steep for a few minutes. You can enjoy it just like this but I like it best with a little bit of steamed milk. Something I like to do if I'm running low on time and I want to simplify the recipe is I will just mix together equal parts of chai concentrate with apple cider, let it simmer for 10 minutes, and add the steamed milk and it still turns out really good. This drink is already pretty sweet because of the apple cider but you can definitely add some more brown sugar or honey to sweeten it more to taste but this is perfect for me and it's a combination of two of my favorite drinks. I love chai and hot apple cider in the fall and they are just so good together. Next up we have a special request from one of our regulars here at the cafe. So when I was working on recipes I asked Alex if there were any fall treats that he would want me to make a drink inspired by and he said cinnamon rolls. So I came up with an iced latte that I tried to make look and taste like a cinnamon roll. We're going to get started by making a cinnamon and brown sugar simple syrup. It's going to give the drink a delicious richness and depth of flavor that makes it taste more like a baked good. Now that the syrup is cool I put it in an airtight jar to store and we're going to come back to that in just a moment but first I'm going to make some vanilla cold foam. This is like our icing that's going to go on top of the drink. To a small glass I'm adding heavy cream, milk, a little bit of our simple syrup, and some vanilla extract and whisking it together with a milk frother. To make the latte I'm brewing two shots of espresso over the syrup. I find that about two teaspoons of syrup is enough for me here but feel free to adjust the sweetness. To me this is such a perfect fall drink. It's still very cozy and comforting even though it's iced because we have this warmth from the brown sugar and cinnamon. The vanilla cream is so good as it mixes into the rest of the drink. It's just perfect. I love this but let's see what Alex thinks. Come over. It's delicious. Oh my god you drank it all that fast. It's so good. I guess he likes it. I'm pretty sensitive to caffeine in the afternoon so I felt like our cafe needed something for the evening crowd. Something that's caffeine free, maybe a little bit more crisp and refreshing and I came up with this pear and cardamom mocktail. What I love about this drink is it combines all these delicious fall flavors but it's still very refreshing and great for a warmer autumn afternoon. We're gonna start by making a simple syrup. I'm using these beautiful red pears. You can use any pears you like for this recipe but this gives it a very pretty pink color. I added some cardamom pods because I feel like they help bring out that delicate floral flavor in pears and a cinnamon stick for warmth and sweetness. We'll add the pears, spices, sugar, and water to a saucepan and bring everything up to a simmer and then reduce it and let it cook for 10 minutes. We'll strain out the pears and spices and by the way these pears are a really delicious snack. I wish you could smell this through the screen. It's perfectly aromatic and what I really like about this syrup is the cardamom and cinnamon kind of bring out those sweet juicy flavors of the pear. This would be really good in a gin drink. I feel like you could also just have it with sparkling water but I'm gonna be mixing mine with some ginger beer and a few other aromatics just to make it more like a mocktail. We're gonna start by adding one and a half ounces of our pear and cardamom syrup and then we'll add half an ounce of fresh lemon juice. Then we'll add three ounces of ginger beer and then we'll top it off with sparkling water. I'm just gonna give it a stir and then I like to add a big sprig of rosemary. This is optional but I feel like it adds a really nice herbaceous aromatic flavor. I would say this drink is equal parts refreshing and warm because we have all those comforting spices but it's also very juicy and crisp from all the other flavors. I also love an oversized garnish. Next up we're doing a classic fall favorite pumpkin hot chocolate and to make it even more delicious we're gonna top it all off with some pumpkin whipped cream. Now there are a bunch of different ways to make pumpkin hot chocolate. I like to make mine with cacao. This is a little bit less processed than regular cocoa powder so it's just a little bit more bitter and earthy which I actually feel works really well with the pumpkin and other spices but if all you have on hand is regular cocoa powder that's completely okay too. We're going to mix together pumpkin puree, maple syrup, cacao, cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, and salt. Then we'll cook this for a few minutes to let the spices bloom. We'll add some milk and whisk everything together until steaming and then add some vanilla extract at the end. So at this point if you want to turn the hot chocolate into a mocha you can add a shot of espresso and it tastes so good with the pumpkin flavors but I'm going to make some pumpkin whipped cream to go on top of my hot chocolate. I'm whisking together heavy cream, powdered sugar, and pumpkin pie spice and then folding in some pumpkin puree. I have a feeling if we did have this hypothetical cafe this would be a really big customer favorite in the fall. It just has so many wonderful comforting fall flavors and it kind of tastes like the drink version of a pumpkin brownie. Okay next up we're making autumn herbal tea. I first made this a couple years ago when I did my autumn harvest tea party but I wanted to recreate it again this time as a single serving instead of a full pot of tea. For the tea blend we're doing dried hibiscus, cloves, a cinnamon stick, and apple and orange slices. I find that this tea tastes best with a pretty strong brew so I'm steeping mine for 10 minutes. I love hibiscus tea because it almost tastes like cranberry. It has tartness and sweetness and I feel like the fruitiness of the flavor works really well with the apple and orange and then we also have cloves and cinnamon that add some warmth to the tea. Can I get you something too? You want a churu water with pumpkin? Okay I'll be right back. There's pumpkin. Okay nope nope nope. Pumpkin and some churu and a little bit of water. We're supposed to mix it together but I don't think it's going to last that long. Hey that's so nasty. What are you doing? Thank you all so much for stopping by my cafe. I hope enjoyed this video and if you want to make any of the recipes I will leave them linked in the description below and I will see you next time.