Coffee break!

This post is dedicated to my wonderful, beautiful friend Sabrina, whom I met while living in Oklahoma.  We share a great love of coffee, and a great love of flavoured ceam!  We spent many a morning together, while her son and my two kids played, chatting over a cup o' java.  Buying flavoured creamer is always more expensive than just regular cream, but buying in Canada is ridiculous as compared to the United States!  So I decided to seek out a recipe to make my own flavoured coffee syrup that I could just combine with regular 10% coffee cream.  I started with a simple syrup and then branched out from there trying a vanilla recipe, and a caramel recipe and then finally settling on a caramel-maple one that I love!  So here's to you Sabrina!  I challenge you to make this recipe on your own, changing the flavouring to suit your tastes!  And never fear! You can make this recipe "sugar-free" by replacing the white and brown sugars with Splenda (1:1) or even Stevia (in the ratio outlined on the packaging).

Caramel-Maple Coffee Syrup

Ingredients:

4 cups water

1 1/2 cups white sugar

1 1/2 cups brown sugar

1/4 cup maple syrup

1 tbsp vanilla extract

Directions:

1.  Combine all ingredients in a sauce pan and place over medium high heat and bring to a boil.

2.  Once boiling, turn heat to medium low and simmer until reduced by about half.

3.  Pour into an empty bottle and store in the fridge.

There you go! Easy, peasy!  Combine about a tablespoon (more or less depending on your taste) with regular half and half (coffee cream) each time you have a cup of coffee. Lasts much longer than a bottle of flavoured coffee creamer for sure!