Hello. I have been away for a while and now I am back. Did anybody miss me? *kisses* *shakes bum*. Anyway, I am just wondering if there is anybody here who enjoys Starbucks and/or Tim horton's summer drinks but finds that the costs really add up? For those of you who are not Canadian, Tim Horton's is a big chain in Canada, they typically serve donuts, hot food, and some drinks. They are not exactly the same as Starbucks (who mainly sell drinks) but they have a similarity--their summer cold drinks are addiction-forming. The one drink I really want to copy from Tim Horton's is their iced cappucino. I looked up several recipes online and I decided on a simple one: instant coffee, artificial vanilla extract, brown sugar, heavy cream (I used 18%), all blended with ice cubes. I tasted the final product, it was OK, and did taste sort of cappucino-like, however it was still quite different from the kind served by Tim Horton's. I actually had seen this other recipe that called for the use of Nescafe Iced Java cappucino syrup, but I decided against it because I felt it was not healthy. But now I am tasting a relatively tasteless cup of flavoured slush, I am thinking maybe I really should give the syrup a try. Has anybody here ever tried to make iced cappucino at home? I would like to learn from you and share experiences with you. Another thing I want to make is Starbucks' green tea frappucino. I looked briefly online and found that most recipes call for the use of matcha green tea powder. I searched online and found that most cost quite a bit of money. Granted, it's a big bag, but at this stage right now I am not yet ready to spend upwards of 25 dollars on something that might not work out. I wonder if there are any posters here who have tried to replicate this frothy drink at home and whether they have any success and more importantly, if there is any cheaper alternative for online matcha powder and if it's any good. If it turns out that this ingredient is truly indispensable then I guess I will shell out the money. But for now, when I am still in this experimental stage, I really would love to hear from other people who have experience with this. And there are other drinks from Starbucks that I would also like to try making. I remember last summer I drank many many cups of this caramel-based frappucino, it was absolutely heavenly but I forget the name. And let's not forget Starbucks' caramel-salted hot chocolate. So simple yet so rich and satisfying. One bonus is that I can use the caramel sauce/syrup and make two kinds of drinks out of it. There are possibly other drinks that I just haven't tried and this is where the good people on this forum come in. I hope to talk to fans of Starbucks and Tim Hortons' and figure out all sorts of clever ways to make delicious drinks without breaking the bank. Let's share our thoughts.
Most of those iced coffee drinks taste so good because they are loaded down with fat and sugar. From what I've read, the largest size of some of Starbucks frozen drinks have more calories than a Big Mac.
I thought Tim Horton's was a donut shop? As far as making specialty drinks at home, most of the recipes I've found online are not the actual recipes, but some sort of reverse engineered guesswork, so they don't usually taste just like the the store's version, although they may be good in their own right. My own experience was trying to make my own butterbeer, which, to be fair, isn't a real drink; it's from the Harry Potter books. But at Universal Studios they sell a "butterbeer" at their Harry Potter world. Since I've not been there since they made their Wizarding world, I can't compare exactly, however I found a butterbeer recipe online and made it one Christmas. It was pretty doggone good. I'll have to get out to Universal Studios to see if I can compare.
This is all very true. I actually try hard to limit how much iced capps from Timmy's I consume every week. Also, I always choose not to have whipped cream when I order a mocha, which I hope makes it slightly less bad. Luckily for me, summer is almost coming to an end (Canada is only hot for three, four at most, months out of a year). Maybe come September the weather will be too cold and I won't crave them iced capps anymore. It is. They sell a lot of donuts, but in addition they also have hot foods like soup (I used to really enjoy their cream of broccoli), paninis, egg salad sandwiches, chili and of course, lots of hot and cold drinks. It's like how Starbucks also serves certain foods even though they are mainly a coffee shop.
