Last autumn, I came up with my own pumpkin scone recipe. I tried the Starbucks top secret recipe and frankly they came out dry and unappealing to me. So I improvised with my own basic scone recipe, and brought a better baked good to the table. (I'll post that recipe later this week.)
This year I'm making my own pumpkin spice lattes, for pennies (about 20 to 30 thin little pennies to make one fantastic pumpkin spice latte). To make them, I needed a pumpkin pie spice syrup. Da Vinci sells 25 oz. bottles of this syrup for between $6.50 and $7.99. Here's my homemade version (which by the way, is also delicious in tea lattes and cocoa), with a cost of about 35c, for 7 oz (enough for 6 mugs or so), roughly 1/5th the price of the store bought syrup. As a bonus, it has real, pronounceable ingredients, including pumpkin -- so you get a serving of vegetables in every mug, right?
There are many recipes online for pumpkin spice syrup, here's mine.
Pumpkin Pie Spice Syrup
3/4 cup (250 g) sugar
3/4 cup (180 mL) water
2-3 cinnamon sticks
1/4 teaspoon (1.25 mL) (slightly heaping if you prefer more spice) ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon (1.25 mL) (slightly heaping if you prefer more spice) ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon (2.5 mL) (once again, slightly heaping if you prefer more spice) ground nutmeg
1 1/2 tablespoons (22.5 mL) canned pumpkin (or 2 1/2 tablespoons (37.5 mL) home cooked pumpkin)
In a non-reactive saucepan, combine sugar, water and cinnamon sticks. Bring to a simmer over Medium and reduce heat to Med-Low, and keep just below a simmer for 5 minutes.
Stir in cloves, ginger and nutmeg. Simmer for 5 additional minutes.
Remove cinnamon sticks (set aside if you wish to reuse them, see below). Using a whisk, blend in pumpkin. Simmer for 2 minutes. Remove from heat.
Line a strainer with 2 layers of cheesecloth and place over a medium sized container. (Don't use a paper coffee filter, it won't strain through very well.) Pour mixture through cheesecloth. To help the liquid portion of the mixture pass through the cheesecloth, stir up the sediment from the bottom a few times.
Store in a covered container in the fridge, and use within 3 weeks. Alternatively, store in the freezer in individual serving portions and use within 6 months.
Just a note -- while you could use ground cinnamon, cinnamon when cooked in water, thickens and becomes gloppy. The cinnamon sticks are the way around this. And you can reduce the sugar by substituting Splenda or stevia for half of the sugar, and still have a very flavorful syrup.
To make 1 latte:
heat 5 oz. (150 mL) of milk in a mug in the microwave, until steaming.
Add 2 to 2 1/2 tablespoons (30-45 mL) syrup (stir up before measuring), 1/4 teaspoon (1.25 mL) vanilla extract (optional, but I think it boosts the flavor) and 1 shot of espresso or 1/2 cup (120 mL) double-strength coffee.
Reheat in microwave for about 15 to 20 seconds. Top with whip cream and a dash of nutmeg.
(I use double-strength coffee and prefer the 2 1/2 tablespoons of the syrup, and I use almond milk. Most of you know I use rice milk for a lot of purposes, but for lattes I like almond milk, as it's richer.)
This would be a really fun beverage to have going in a crock pot on Thanksgiving, from morning to midday, as family and friends are arriving.
What to do with cinnamon sticks and sediment/pulp from straining?
You know me, I'm not about to let those goodies go to waste. I freeze the cinnamon sticks in a container and reuse either in a second batch of this syrup or for spiced cider. And the pulpy stuff I add to the next batch of muffins or apple pie.
Have your pumpkin spice latte with a warm from the oven pumpkin scone -- recipe here.
What's your favorite autumn-themed beverage?
