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Monday, November 17, 2008

Homemade Coffee Creamer




If you are like me and the millions of other folks affected by the slow economy, then I bet you have shaved some of your day to day luxuries. I used to treat myself to Starbucks coffee once or more a week. Then it changed to drinking coffee at home, to no coffee at all. Now that the weather is cold I am craving a nice warm cup 'o joe in the mornings. The funny thing is I hate the actual taste of coffee. I love the smell of it brewing but I could never drink the stuff plain. I laden it with creamer and not just plain creamer but the flavored stuff.

My two favorites are Coffee Mate Chocolate Raspberry and Pumpkin Pie Spice. It costs about $3.50 for a large container of this stuff.

Recently, I had an idea. Why not make my own creamer? I have a bunch of sweetened condensed milk in my pantry for desserts and I thought I would play around a bit.

I got out one of my Mason jars and emptied the sweetened condensed milk into it. I like the fat free version of SC milk, it makes me feel less guilty! Then I used half a tsp of pumpkin pie spice and poured 1.5 cups of 2% milk into the jar. I took some half & half, about 1/2 cup's worth and poured that in. Last, I put 1/3 cup of pumpkin puree in the jar. I took a spoon and stirred in to loosen the condensed milk a bit. Put the lid on and I shook it real well. The SC milk was still stuck to the bottom so I ran some warm water over the bottom portion for about 2 minutes and shook it until the SC milk was mixed thoroughly with the rest of the ingredients.

Creamer holds up well in the jar. Chill in the fridge for up to two weeks.

This turned out even better than the Coffee Mate stuff! I'll have to play around a bit for some fun flavors, like my beloved Chocolate Raspberry. Plus it was a lot cheaper than going to the store and buying the Coffee Mate.

The best part is Coffee Mate is full of saturated fats and it has partially hydrogenated oil in it. Now I can drink my cream with a little coffee and not feel like I am giving myself a slow death by ingesting all that ickiness!

For all the eco friendly folks out there, by making your own creamer in a mason jar you save another plastic container from ending up in a landfill. Every little bit counts, right?

Try this! Let me know if you come up with any tasty variations of this coffee creamer!

8 comments:

{oc cottage} said...

Cool!

M ^..^

Rhea said...

I don't drink coffee (hot tea is more my thing) but I love mason jars and your coffee cup is beautiful!

DiPaola Momma said...

ooohh great idea! And you can also, if you want, go to the Coffeemate website and pick up their Q. I hate that I'm reading this TODAY! Cuz I got a great deal w/that coupon and a sale at Walgreens last week.. ended up paying .76 cents EACH! Print the coupon. And I'll pour over my lists and see if I can find you a good sale soon.

MaricrisG said...

We are so alike! I can't stand the taste of straight coffee and I call my coffees "creamer with coffee"! HA!
So funny, we went out of the country last year and couldn't find the right creamer for my coffee so I made one. SO close to what u did! wild!

N. said...

Nice idea! I'd like to see what you figure out for the chocolate reaspberry one...

Live.Love.Eat said...

I like the sounds of that and of just making your own creamer. Thank you for coming by to say hello! I am still playing catch up.

Eve said...

Hmmm... out of all the things to make home-made, creamer would never had occured to me! I'm a 'milk in my coffee' type of girl, but this is so clever, I'll have to pass it on to my creamer using friends!

Unknown said...

I made my first batch of creamer using the same base ingredients. I'm a mocha girl so I dissolved 3 tbls of ovaltine in the milk, then added it to the SC milk. It turned out great! I am going to play with some other flavors now. Great recipe!