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Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Eat your heart out Starbucks...I'm saving my $4!

Pumpkin Spice Lattes.
Glorious.
Sweet Perfection.
Horrifically expensive.

So, I researched pumpkin spice syrups, found a boat load of options and then tweaked them all a little to come up with this:

Melt 1 cup of sugar with 1 1/2 cups of water over low/medium heat until sugar dissolves.
Whisk in:
1 Tbsp cinnamon
1 1/5 tsp nutmeg
1 1/5 tsp ginger
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 tsp canned pumpkin

Cook over low/medium heat, whisking constantly for 3-5 minutes. Do not let it get to boiling point, and do not overcook it. This bad boy will turn in to a gelatinous mess of pumpkin goo if you do.
After you cook it let it rest for 5 minutes then begin straining (waiting longer and allowing it to fully cool with make it harder to strain).
I highly recommend using cheese cloth and straining in to a glass measuring cup where you can let it cool the remainder of the way before transferring to whatever container you're going to store it in.
Unfortunately I did not have cheesecloth. The don't-want-to-leave-the-house-to-buy-a-necessary-element-of-the-recipe version is this:

Yes, that is a paper towel masking taped to my measuring cup. No, I do not recommend it. It takes forever and the paper towel clogs easily to you have to keep spooning it out or replacing it.
That said, it still came out beautiful, smells delicious, and this will be an addition to my coffee tomorrow morning. Annnnnd probably almost every morning until December, when I will switch it to gingerbread syrup.

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