White Chocolate Mocha Hack!

Just in time for your Monday morning blah's, I thought I'd post how I make my favorite coffee drink at home!

Husband and I quite enjoy White Chocolate Mochas from Starbucks. On the other hand, our bank account does not (neither does my waistline!). At $4 and $6 a cup, we try to limit ourselves to indulging just once a week (usually on Sunday's when we grocery shop because the Starbucks is inside the grocery store. Who can resist that??)

So I turned to good ol' Pinterest to find a copy cat recipe so I could make it at home (hopefully for cheaper than $4 a cup!). I came across THIS PIN, tried it and loved it!! Then I started thinking about how I could reduce the amount made (hers is for a large batch) and the calorie count,  because even though it would be cheaper to make this at home, I couldn't justify all of the extra calories in the whole milk.

So I started just using skim, 1%, or even 2% milk and that easily reduced the calories and the flavor didn't really change (consistency is a little less creamy, but I don't mind that).

So here's the recipe I use to make my daily cup of white mocha (I mostly just eyeball it now, but until you make it a few times, the recipe is helpful). This makes one small cup, adjust your amounts of ingredients if you want to make a bigger cup.

Ingredients:

2 tbsp White Chocolate chips

1/2 cup Milk (1 or 2%, skim, whole-whatever you like or have on hand)

3/4 cup Hot, fresh coffee (husband picks the types/flavors we buy, but it's usually a light to medium strength or sometimes a vanilla flavor, again, you can use whatever suits you)

Put the choc chips in a microwave safe mug, then add the milk. 

Put in the microwave for about 1 minute, take it out and stir it. If the chocolate is still not melted, put it back in for 10 second increments until melted. 

Once melted, add coffee, stir and enjoy!! You could always add some whip cream to the top to really make it feel like the fancy shmancy drink you get at Starbucks, but I usually just skip it. 

This recipe can always be modified to your taste--add more or less chocolate, milk, or coffee to intensify the flavor you prefer!

I hate math, so I'm not going to even attempt to break down the cost of this (since you use such a small amount of each item). I'll take a wild guess and say that each cup this size costs me about $.25---a savings of at least $3 per cup over Starbucks!! And I don't have to get out of my pj's or put on make-up! That's a win-win in my book!!

Enjoy!!

-A