Cold Brew Coffee and Iced Dulce de Leche Latte recipes

Cold brew coffee without any special equipment, plus how to make an iced dulce de leche latte with it.

Cold Brew Coffee and Dulce de Leche Lattes

By Sue Lau | Palatable Pastime

Cold brew coffee is one of those recipes I had tucked away but then something came up and I needed to post it quick, so off-loaded it to a large website. I’d been in a cooking challenge doing international recipes and Argentina came up. And having some dulce le leche hanging around, I stirred it into my cold brew to make a latte.

I know a lot of people will use a French press to make their cold brew. And you might be wondering what that is (or perhaps not, you guys are very savvy…) or even why you would want to make cold brew.

A French press is an unpowered coffee pot that utilizes a mesh screen, where you essentially press grounds or tea down and the mesh keeps it out of the drink. Usually coffee made this way is using very hot to boiling water. You can make a cold brew, but it does take time, much in the same way that making sun tea takes time- same theory in principle.

If you have made sun-tea you are probably quite aware of how much more smooth the flavor is, as using boiling water in tea releases bitter compounds into the drink. And the same thing with coffee- as smooth as you’d like to think your favorite coffee beans are, there are still some bitter components.

So if you make the cold press, it is quite a lot more smooth. If you have been to a barista at a place like Starbucks, you might notice how much more smooth their iced coffee is. And it is.

But you don’t really need special equipment to make this- you can chuck the coffee straight into a canning jar, cover it with cold water, cap it and let it sit overnight. No electricity. No French pot. You will need a strainer and some coffee filters though- I usually use 3-4.

And I DO actually have French pots- at one time I managed to have three on hand but gave one away. But truthfully, this is so much easier, mainly because I make a lot of things from scratch so keep a good supply of canning jars with reusable plastic lids near the kitchen, for things I might make often, like ketchup, barbecue sauce, salad dressings, or mayonnaise to name a few.

So I will go ahead and bring the recipes back onto the blog and share both of them (coffee and latte) here. Since I probably will not be on that other site much, and don’t want to forget where I put this. I’ve lost recipes on old websites before. It’s best to have them tucked into one tidy spot.

You might be interested in this especially if you end up having your power go out. I cringe to think of friends in a hurricane’s path that might be out for days, or in the case of Puerto Rico, much longer than that.

So enjoy. I do.

Cold Brew Coffee

Servings: 3-4
Time: 6hr
Difficulty: easy
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Ingredients:

2/3 cup fresh ground coffee
1 quart canning jar with lid
water, cold
coffee filter
strainer

Method:

Place coffee grounds into the quart canning jar and cover with cold water to the top.
Add the cap and let sit undisturbed overnight.
Next day, place a coffee filter into an appropriately sized mesh strainer.
Spoon out the grounds on top, then pour the rest of the liquid through the filter, extracting all the coffee and changing filters as needed. I use several in the filtering process.
Discard your grounds and rinse out the jar- I add it to the garden because it is good for plants, shaking the filters outside (you don’t want to just drop the filters on the ground).
To use, mix equal parts cold brew coffee concentrate with cold water and serve either iced or you can also heat it.
Add cream or sugar as desired.
Refrigerate unused coffee concentrate in the rinsed out jar.

From the kitchen of palatablepastime.com

Dulce de Leche Latte

Servings: 4-6
Time: 2hr 30mins
Difficulty: easy
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Ingredients:

1/2 cup cold brew coffee concentrate (see recipe above)
1/2 cup milk or almond milk
1/4 cup Nestle la Lachera canned dulce de leche

Method:

Heat the dulce de leche in a microwave, then whisk together with the cold brew coffee concentrate and milk.
Serve over ice or heat for a warm latte.

From the kitchen of palatablepastime.com