Santa’s Spiced Coffee

What can be better than a hot cup of coffee?

How about a hot cup of spiced coffee with some cookies, sitting by the fire?  Everyone (OK, not everyone, but a lot of people) likes a nice cup of coffee, even Santa!

So why not leave him some cookies with a flask of whisky hot spiced coffee?  It will not only keep him warm on his long journey through the night, but it will also keep him awake!

You can also make up this mixture and give it as gifts to your coffee-loving friends or do as I am and sell it at a craft fair should you be into that kind of thing.  It’s easily doubled or tripled as needed.  After you mixed it all together, you can put it into jars or bags or small Christmas tins and decorate.

I’ve called it Santa’s Spiced Coffee, but you can give it another name such as Christmas Day Coffee, Holiday Spiced Coffee, etc.  Use your imagination.

**Santa’s Spiced Coffee**

2 C ground coffee, medium roast

2 Tbsp icing sugar (powdered, 10X)

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp cardamom seeds

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

Mix all the ingredients together thoroughly.  Put into desired containers and add a tag with the following instructions:

“Place one tablespoon per person into coffee machine’s filter.  Add water and allow to brew.  Pour hot coffee into mug and add cream or milk and sugar to taste.  Use a candy cane as a novelty stirrer!”

If giving as a gift, give a coffee mug or two with it along with a candy cane.  Remember, use your imagination.  If you want to do this for next year, start saving coffee jars through the year so you have a supply by next Christmas.  Here’s how mine came out…

For the bag on the left, I put the coffee into a plastic bag and twist-tied it.  Then I put it into the decorative Christmas draw-string bag which is made of material, along with a candy cane and the tag with the instructions on the back.

The jar has the label on the front with another on the back with the instructions.  A big red bow of ribbon with a gift tag made of thin foam for gift giving.

Make sure you keep some for yourself!

♥♥ Terri ♥♥

(recipe compliments of Karen Burns Booth at Lavender & Lovage)

Tea for Me

Tea.  Hot tea.  I hated it when I was younger.  Couldn’t stand the

taste or the smell yet mom would always try to make me drink it when I wasn’t feeling well.  Drinking it would make me feel even worse!  I could drink iced tea with no problem, but keep the hot stuff away from me…yuck.

I did enjoy coffee and started drinking that at a rather early age.  My earliest memory of drinking coffee was around the age of 6 or 7, mainly on Sunday mornings.  When we lived out on Long Island, Dad, my brother and I would hop in the car and drive down to Cream Puff Bakery to get rolls, jelly donuts and crumb buns to have with breakfast and also the Sunday Paper, The NY Daily News.  Mom would stay home to get breakfast cooking and the coffee ready (in our old aluminum percolator) and we’d all sit around the table eating breakfast and reading the papers.  The extent of my reading of the newspaper was the comics.  I highly doubt I’d be reading the business section!

Then when I was in my 20’s, I decided to try herbal teas.  I tolerated them enough to be able to drink them, but I still wasn’t really enjoying tea as much as I enjoyed coffee.  As I got older, I started enjoying them a bit more, but I still wasn’t drinking them as much as the coffee.  Herbal teas are usually drank without milk and I think that was part of the problem of why I wasn’t to crazy about them.

Once I met my British hubby (Chef P), I thought I’d try some English teas, such as Earl Grey.  Wow, what a difference from American teas such as Lipton’s or Tetley’s.  The Earl Grey had a completely different taste and I actually enjoyed it!

The first time I came over here, I met Chef P’s mother.  Once we came into her flat and got through all of the introductions, she asked the standard hospitable thing that every Brit asks their guests when they come in: Would you like a cup of tea?  Now, having just recently started drinking ‘English tea’, instead of just saying ‘Yes, thank you’, I asked her the stupid question of ‘what kind of tea?’  She looked at me, then at P and I realised what I said and wanted to hide.  I don’t think she really knew what to say to me, but in the end, it all worked out and I had a quite enjoyable cup of Assam tea.

As time went on and I eventually moved over here, I started drinking more and more tea.  I now have several different kinds of tea in the house:  English Breakfast {regular & decaf} (my favorite), White Tea, Green Tea Blend, Basic Black Tea {regular & decaf}, Lemon & Ginger, Valerian Tea (helps with sleep) and White Chocolate Tea {a once in a while treat}.  Most of these are tea bags with the exception of the decaf English Breakfast and the White Chocolate, which are loose teas.

I’m currently drinking a cup of White Tea.  I must have milk in my tea, no matter the flavor and honey.  I probably have 3-4 cups of tea and coffee each day, and only one of those cups is caffeine (occasionally I will have a second caffeine in the early afternoon) as I needed to cut down for medical reasons.  And this may sound crazy to some of you caffeine freaks out there, but my first cup of the day, whether it be coffee or tea, is always decaf.  I keep the caffeine hit to my second cup because it’s closer to my breakfast time and caffeine affects my blood sugar if I have it first thing in the morning.

So what’s your favorite hot drink tipple?

♥♥ Terri  ♥♥