If you’ve ever spent a day in my home then you know all about our love of coffee. I know, it’s not considered “good for you” in many circles, but we have a strong connection with coffee here. Might be my french blood?
The morning cup of joe is more utilitarian, it warms us, wakes us and allows us a gradual transition from sleepy to awake while it is slowly sipped. We don’t use an electric coffee maker, rather we do a french press. We seldom have more that the one cup for each of us in the morning, we use cheap ground coffee.
Come evening we traditionally have a latte/ espresso treat with freshly ground beans and some fun flavorings. It’s a tradition we started as an occasional indulgence for ourselves as we completed the day and came back together for the evening. About 10 years ago, the evening coffee was also the “morning coffee” to one of us as we alternated working graveyard shifts early in our lives together.
Now the evening latte is regular occurrence. It’s a surge of happy indulgence and a kick in the pants to get two haggard parents through the madness of bedtime rituals and such.
Nathan has been dreaming of making Starbucks style “pumpkin spice lattes” from home for years. Cause why pay $5 a cup plus gas money when you have the equipment and skills to be able to do it at home? We’ve tried all sorts of syrups to fulfill this dream, none were resulting in the Starbucks style drink he yearned for.
Then we were given two bottles of Torani syrups to experiment with. We’ve tried Monin Syrups and DaVinci is what we normally use since it’s sold at our local food buying club. We’d looked at Torani syrups before but never committed to buying them online.
Unfortunately, we didn’t get a pumpkin syrup flavor to continue Nathan’s Starbuck mimcing experimentations but we still did lots of syrup playing.
The first thing we learned the HARD way was, Torani syrups aren’t like the watered down ones we were used to. They are much more concentrated Pouring a full ounce of syrup in a shot of espresso returns a majorly sweet smack in the face. Nathan served me up a few of those face smacks and I just drank them an tried not to be a complainer 😛
Then we really flipped through the Torani recipe book and saw that the recipes called for merely splashes of syrup, not ounces… Surprise & oops! It’s a good surprise, really. Means you get more bang for your buck and syrup lasts much longer. Win!
We were also surprised to learn about all the non-coffee possibilities Torani syrup brings. Did you know they have a BACON flavored syrup? I bet a splash of that in some pancake batter could pretty closely mimic those pancake and bacon monstrosities fast food chains are shoving in our faces these days.
Tiramisu and Toasted Marshmallow were other flavors that had Nathan drooling. They have citrus flavors, baked goods flavors, nut flavors and many other gems. You can make Italian sodas, cocktails, flavored tea, lemonade and much more with the syrups. Have you used a Torani syrup in a recipe before? How did it go? I’d love to hear some interesting ways to use these, perhaps in baking?
For now, we will stick to Torani syrup in our coveted coffee treats, but the next time you have a flavor conundrum consider trying one of the 100+ Torani syrups to do the trick.
This is a sponsored post for SheSpeaks & Torani, I wasn’t paid for this post. Was just provided with a product to test & review.
