Mr. Food on Lattes

If you know about Mr. Food at all, you probably don't understand this title. Mr. Food? Espresso connoisseur? I'll explain.

I used to look forward to watching Mr. Food's segments during the local news. Not necessarily because of his recipes, but I liked seeing how he would fit in his trademark line, "Oooh, it's so good!", onto the end of each segment. My mom was watching the news the other day when Mr. Food had a recipe for for Mocha Latte Syrup. Because of the rise in gas prices and people cutting back on unnecessary expenses, he came up with an alternative to the popular chain-we-all-know-and-love's espresso-based beverages.

From the metal container clockwise: Water, cocoa powder, sugar and cinnamon, espresso powder.

Assemble the ingredients.

Whisk the dry ingredients with the water in a saucepan over medium heat

Bring to a boil, and boil for 1 minute.

Remove from heat, whisk in vanilla extract, let cool, then pour into a container.

Mr. Food says to use half & half, but I thought that was disgusting. A) I never order half & half in my espresso drinks, B) the heaviness of it might overpower the latte syrup. I used 1% milk, but whatever you have is fine. Heat to 180°, and remove any skin that formed on top.

Add 1 tablespoon of syrup to the bottom of each cup.

Since the size of these cups are smaller than average, and taking into account I wanted to top the milk with foam, I probably used about 6 oz. of milk per cup.

Guess what this is!


Parting words from Mr. Food!


This was not drunk as fast as Usain "Thunderbolt" Bolt sprinted the 200 meters.

The flavor of this mixture was pretty good, a nice change to hot chocolate, but not quite potent enough to be my daily coffee fix. No worries, next time I'll replace half the milk with coffee. If you want a different flavor, grate orange rind into the cup before pouring the liquid in, as well as on top.