It's finally time...

...for iced coffee! It was beautifully warm and sunny early this week. Perfect for sitting in the garden with an iced coffee.

First iced coffee of the year...photo by Kristin
But coffee and I have a complicated relationship. I can drink a limited amount before my heart starts palpitating and I can't decide if I want to laugh or cry or both while pacing back and forth in our apartment sweating a lot.
When I first started drinking coffee, it was a vehicle for cream and sugar. Then I had Dunkin' Donuts coffee when I moved to Providence, R.I. to go back to school. When you order a "regular" coffee, they add the cream and sugar for you (I think common on the east coast?). Let me just say that I may have come as close as I ever will to experiencing crack. Unless you include Peete's coffee( but that is a different beast). I have learned to moderate my love of overly creamy and sugary coffee by including just a little of both in my cup. Where is this all going? I wanted a way to have more of the refreshing-iced-coffee-goodness without having the cardiac incident that comes with it. So I started thinking....and I thought of the coffee syrup that has it's roots in Rhode Island. It's like Hershey's syrup, but coffee flavored. They add it to milk to make "coffee milk"--the official drink of the state of Rhode Island, I just learned. Now I have my starting point. Coffee syrup is pretty sweet, a little too much so, otherwise, I would order a case for twenty bucks and call it good. I also haven't had a glass of milk since, um, since...ew.

Coffee cremosa....photo by Krisitn
To make a long story short, I have begun experimenting with my own coffee syrup. The first attempt turned out pretty well. It doesn't quite have the consistency of a syrup yet. I was trying to avoid using any heat. A lot of recipes I found on the net to use as reference basically kept cooking coffee over and over. Too much heat+oils in coffee=bitter. Last summer, I heard about the NY Times recipe for iced coffee. It is uh-MAZE-ing. The flavor of cold brewed coffee is sublime. Rich, complex, caramel-y and velvety yet refined and balanced without a hint of bitterness. I was trying to replicate that in my coffee syrup. I cold brewed a really strong ratio (1/2 c. grounds to 1 1/2 c. water) for a little over a day. After filtering the liquid from the grounds, I stirred in 1/2c. brown sugar until it was dissolved. Oh, the other thing about me and coffee is that white sugar is not at the top of my list for preferred sweeteners. Turbinado sugar, brown sugar, honey, agave--yes, yes, yes and yes. White sugar only if any of the aforementioned are not available. I would rather drink it black if my only choice was artificial sweetener.(I would maybe rather do anything than consume that stuff).
Back to the syrup...
The flavor is great, pretty much everything I was looking for, so now I'm trying to decide if I need to tweak the consistency.
To solve the "full glass of milk=ew", I thought of creamosas, or more commonly known as Italian sodas. They are basically two glugs flavored sugar water added to club soda/sparkling water with a little tiny splash of cream over ice. You can probably see where this is going...
My first coffee cremosa was flavorful and refreshing without giving me a heart attack. For now, I will use up this batch and let you know if I make any adjustments.
Other uses for coffee syrup?
Over ice cream
In a cocktail, maybe with Bailey's and/or Frangelico or Grand Marnier or creme cacao and/or vodka...
Stirred into yogurt

I would try to think of more, but I have a roast chicken ready to come out of the oven!
(Foreshadowing???)