With Extra Foam on Top

I am in the habit of dropping by Starbucks two or three times a week. Particularly on mornings when I have taken The Husband to the office so that I have the car, I like to pop in and grab a latte or a coffee frappuccino and maybe a bite of bagel or pumpkin bread (oh, their pumpkin bread!) to share with Big Bit. It is a lovely way to start the morning and I don't know anywhere else where you can get a non-greasy breakfast through a drive-through window.

Trouble is, it's expensive. A grande latte is $3.10 + flavoring is $3.65 + tax is about $4.10. Now, there are some days, when it seems like a mocha latte is literally all that stands between me and the ruin and destruction of all I hold dear, and $4.10 isn't that much to pay for staving off Armageddon. But other days, when I just need something caffeinated and hot and it didn't make sense to fire up the coffee pot at home just for one cup, it's a smidge painful. Actually, $4.10 isn't so painful, but when you add two pieces of pumpkin bread ($4.50) plus tax (call it $0.55) that means that your coffee bill for the week is going to be pushing twenty-five bucks and that, my friends, is painful. Particularly when your husband makes about as much as a high school teacher.

Enter my lovely friend, the espresso pot. The Husband got me this one (I think) last Christmas and a lovely milk frother to go with it. They've been gathering dust for a while, but now we are definitely making up for lost time.

Libby's Recipe for a Very Large Latte
4 tsp coffee syrup (optional)
1/2 cup espresso
2 1/2 cups hot milk*

Pour ingredients in order into a very large mug, or two medium-sized ones. 

*To froth your milk, heat your milk in a heavy saucepan on about medium or a little higher. When the milk is hot but boiling, stir gently with a frother or whisk vigorously with a whisk until you have a lot of foam. To pour, hold the foam back with a spoon and pour in the hot milk, and then spoon the foam on top.

I use Cafe Bustelo espresso, and it would appear that I am getting about 10 pots from 10 oz. A 10-oz can at Walmart cost about $5. (Apparently you can get it much cheaper on amazon, but I haven't done that yet.) So a pot's worth is $0.50.My pot makes about a cup of espresso, so if I just reuse the second half cup the next day (which I've done and can't really tell a difference), it's $0.25 per latte.

I use caramel coffee syrup from Target, which cost about $6. Four teaspoons of that cost about $0.33.

Milk costs about $3 per gallon, and so 2 1/2 cups of it cost about $0.47

So, my much-bigger-than-a-Starbucks-grande latte costs me $1.05, and I can tone down the sugar if I want, or use sugar-free syrup, and get mountains of foam that would never fit in a Starbucks coffee cup.