Wednesday, December 9, 2009

A fabulous cup of coffee...


I totally love a good cup of coffee. Every morning on my way to work, I pass by the dreaded Starbucks drive-thru, and I want to stop SO BAD. Alas, my pocketbook prevents it. Recently, I combined a couple of "tricks" to make a pretty cravable cup of coffee here at home. What's the trick??? Vanilla beans! It was about time I found a way to use the one I've had in pantry from two Christmas's ago. (Thanks mom for the brilliant stocking stuffer!)

So what's the trick?

I made vanilla bean whipped cream for Thanksgiving, but I had quite a bit left over. Igot the idea from my favorite baking blog, Bakeat350, to freeze it in dollops on a cookie sheet, and they froze up just fine! I stuck the remaining vanilla bean pod in a small food storage tub and added some white sugar. Voila - my own vanilla sugar! Who can argue with a cup of coffee doctored up with homemade whipped cream and vanilla sugar? Does it get any better???

I know whole vanilla beans aren't the cheapest ingredient, but I'll be able to use and add to this little tub of sugar for a very long time! I once heard Martha Stewart say she'd been using the same jar with vanilla bean pods for years! She just keeps topping it off. Works for me!

See Beingfrugal.net and WorksForMeWednesday.

4 comments:

  1. I love that idea. I too am a Starbucks addict!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great idea! I never thought about freezing portion sizes of whipped cream, but it makes sense. Makes me wish I had some vanilla beans on hand.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yuuuuuum! Girl...I wanna come over and share!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Nice idea for the frozen whipped cream. And yes, Martha is right (of course!), you can just add more sugar. It will last you for a VERY long time. That's one very nice coffee and you didn't have to wait in line, or be assaulted by the noise level! Our local Starbucks are always much too crowded, with lines out the door at peak hours.

    ReplyDelete

Followers

Blog Archive