Starbucks style

So we got home from vacay this past Sunday.  I'll be posting some pictures from that as soon as I sort through them.  It was a good trip, although as I am learning as a mother now - not so restful.  Anyways, we got home on Sunday so William could go to work on Monday like normal, only to find that his truck wouldn't start Monday morning.  Bummer.  Not what you want to deal with in post-vacation, sleepy zombie land.  So poor William had to spend all of his Monday out in the heat trying to diagnose what was wrong with the truck.  He was so tired and frustrated, I knew he just needed a caffeine kick in the pants.  Normally I don't advocate drinking caffeine, although I do drink it on occasion when my eyes are about to shut.  Not great, but it could be worse.  We don't keep sodas around, which leaves us with only hot caffeinated beverages.  Not great for working outside in the heat.  So I had the brilliant idea of making our own ice-mocha-coffee drink thing.  And it was just that - brilliant.  (Or extremely bad now that I know it can be made and is AWESOME!)

So there is nothing healthy about this.  I don't advocate making this on ANY kind of regular basis.  But if you are desperate, here is a rockin' iced coffee drink.  And SO much cheaper than buying yourself some crazy thing at your local coffee shop.

All the amounts are approximates as I was eyeing and dumping.

2 cups ice
2 Tbsp instant coffee brewed in 1/2c water
3 Tbsp sugar
1/4c of cream (creamer, dry creamer, non-dairy cream or milk) - anything will work)
1 heaping Tbsp of unsweetened cocoa powder

Blend in blender adding a bit more water or cream as needed. 

This is actually not quite as sweet as some of the mocha fraps in this world, so maybe it has that in it's favor, but it's still SO good.  You could experiment with healthier sweeteners, but all I had was agave and dates - which somehow just didn't seem to fit an iced coffee drink.  So I used what little refined sugar I have still in the house.  The chocolate was not too pronounced in this batch, so I think whenever the next time is that we are desperate for a cold caffeine drink, we'll try using 2 Tbsp of the unsweetened cocoa powder.  I can only imagine how good this would be if you used coconut milk in place of cream.  Alas I didn't have that on hand and hubby is not a big coconut person, so we didn't do that.

So there you go.  My first unhealthy recipe posted.  But it falls under the frugal category, so I figured I'd share it anyways.  Plus it was just SO good.  Enjoy sparingly! :-D