Inspired by coffee shop drinks, these 5 recipes will make you feel like you’ve got your own home cafe. Two hot drinks to warm the soul, and three cool drinks to beat the heat!

We’ve all been making a lot of effort to keep ourselves from going stir-crazy during this time, and because of that, I feel like we’re all going to come out of this with a new skill or two. I myself have been puttering around the kitchen more than usual, and the results are mostly pretty awesome. Between my desire to experiment and to drink delicious things during this INSANE Philippine heatwave, I’ve been playing the role of barista girl in my own little home cafe.

I even busted out the fancy glasses and the spouted jugs just to complete the experience. Never mind that I always end up having to wash 4x more glasses and measuring cups than necessary lol. Mind you, not all of the drinks I’ve been trying have actually ended up passing my taste test, but the five I’m sharing today are definitely what I would refer to as coffee shop drinks in terms of taste and overall experience.

The video above was largely created to indulge my love for recording pour shots, as well as shots where the light and dark components of a drink swirl together. Of course I am also enthusiastic to share the recipes for these coffee shop drinks with you, which is why I’ve prepared this unnecessarily detailed blog post to walk you through the process of making each drink. For once I’m writing a post that’s mostly self-serving, but hopefully it’ll still be informative lol. I hope you are able to give at least one of these coffee shop drinks a go.

The recipes are sequenced by the number of ingredients you’ll need to create each one. Everything’s really easy as well, though the last recipe might have an ingredient you’ll need to purchase. Anyway, here goes:

To start our round-up of coffee shop drinks, we have the Matcha White Chocolate Iced Latte. I had to make a bunch of tweaks to the original to make the flavors of the drink come out a little more, but for the most part, I think this drink will satisfy lovers of the matcha-white choco combo.

Here’s what you’ll need:

First up, we make the matcha mixture by vigorously whisking together very hot water and good quality matcha powder. Emphasis on the good quality. Emphasis also on the vigorously whisking part. You want to make sure you don’t have any whole bits of matcha at the bottom when you start drinking this, so just be aggressive about whisking until all the matcha powder is dissolved. Use a whisk if you don’t have a chasen. I actually have one but I’m too lazy to clean it so I used a whisk too lol. Set that aside a moment once you’re done.

Next step, you want to melt your salt and white chocolate in your milk. You can do this in two ways: You can either heat the milk separately and then add in your chocolate and salt, but the easier way would be to heat all three ingredients together in a saucepan. (Didn’t show this in the video because I hate filming by the stove. It’s really dark there. So I chose to do option A.) Mix until melted, smooth, and homogenous. I actually forgot to include the salt in the photo above, but though you can omit it, I think it’s a good touch. Something to cut down on the sweetness of the white chocolate.

Then, we use our handy dandy frother to aerate the milk. Because we gotta froth at least one thing from this list of what I refer to as coffee shop drinks, right? Whisk vigorously if you don’t have a frother, or just skip this step I guess.

Once both of your components are done, it’s time to pour everything into your serving glass! In goes the matcha, followed by the biggest component of a latte, which is the milk. This was supposed to make 2 servings, but I used such a small serving glass I had to divide this into 3.

Finally, stir and enjoy this matcha made in heaven drink! The sweet white chocolate often makes a great combo for earthy green tea. They kind of push and pull with each other to create a good balanced combo. And to be honest, adding white chocolate to the milk makes it taste just a tad milkier, if that makes sense. I go for this when I’m in the mood for something cold and a little milkier-tasting than usual.

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Matcha White Chocolate Iced Latte

Servings 2

Ingredients

1 to 1½ tablespoons high-quality matcha green tea powder, use more for stronger matcha flavor
¼ cup 60 mL very hot water
2 cups 480 mL milk of choice
170 grams good-quality white chocolate, roughly chopped
Pinch of salt
Ice cubes

Instructions

In a small bowl, sift in matcha powder. Drizzle in the hot water and whisk vigorously until matcha is completely dissolved. Divide the matcha between two serving cups with ice.
In a small saucepan, heat the milk over low heat. Stir occasionally to prevent burning. When the milk is nearly simmering, add in the white chocolate. Whisk constantly until chocolate is completely dissolved into the milk. Add in a pinch of salt and stir well. Take the milk off the heat.
Use your frother or blender to froth the warm white chocolate milk until bubbles form on top, then gently pour our over your matcha and ice.
Stir and enjoy!

Notes

Adapted from Broma Bakery blog

On to one of my favorite drinks of all time: the Matcha Espresso Fusion Latte. Talking about the store-bought version, the best one I’ve had so far is from Serenitea. They call it a chaffea, and it’s cheaper and even more delicious than the Starbucks version. I drink it with minimal sweetener but with coffee jelly added in. You could totally do that here. (In fact I actually just bought some coffee jelly for this specific purpose.) I’ve made this so many times the past few weeks, I already have all the measurements memorized.

Here’s what you’ll need:

Just like with the first recipe, we will make the matcha base for this drink. Whisk together good-quality matcha powder, your sweetener of choice, and some very hot water. Whisk vigorously to make sure you don’t have any leftover lumps or bits. (I really hate when that happens, and I have had that happen in coffee shops.) You can sift your matcha if you want, but I have never had any issues as long as I put in the work whisking this.

As for the sweetener, you can adjust it to make it sweeter. However, I don’t recommend omitting or reducing unless you want to drink something that tastes a little bitter, a little earthy, and something that feels like it needs a little something to spruce it up. That little bit of sweetness really brings this drink together. I often like to use maple syrup and honey as my sweetener for this, but others like simple syrup or plain sugar. The choice is yours.

Now that we’ve got our matcha mixture, we pour it into the bottom of a tall glass filled with ice.

Next up, the milk. You can use skim, whole, low-fat, 2%. We’re making these coffee shop drinks at home so we can modify it to our heart’s desires, am I right? Now I’ve never tried to make this with milks that have a more distinct taste on their own like soy or almond, but the coffee shops do it so why not? You want to pour the milk in gently, not just dump it in one go over the matcha.

The final layer is the espresso layer. Similarly, pour this in gently. Please use a spouted vessel so you don’t make a mess like I did. You can probably get away with using really strong brewed coffee for this, BUT I know for a fact you can create a good cup of Matcha Espresso Fusion Latte using some really good instant espresso. When I make this in a hurry (which is often), I actually use instant espresso. It should be a brand that passes your standard, because then you’ll know it will be pretty good. 1 Tablespoon instant espresso plus 1/4 cup water will be exactly 2 shots of good, strong espresso. (Never tried it with instant coffee though.) It’s really a matter of convenience, but obviously some fresh espresso can’t be beat.

After pouring in the espresso, wait for the liquids to settle and stop swirling around. The layers will come out a little clearer then. You’ll see those beautiful brown, white, and green layers after maybe 10 seconds.

After you appreciate those gorgeous layers, it’s time to go in with a stirrer and ~~DESTROY~~ mix it all together. It doesn’t make sense to me to drink this as is. It’s a fusion latte! Speaking of which, since this drink is a combination of two caffeinated things, caffeine-sensitive people probably shouldn’t drink this in the late afternoon. Other than that, all I can say is: UGH THIS IS SO GOOD. I’m going to make myself a glass after I write this post.

For the record, I’ve tried other formulations of this drink from other sources, and this is the best one I’ve found. The ratios are perfect, the drink is delicious, and I would like to drown in it.

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