Menu
Author:
Franco Salzillo
Stop me if you disagree, but I just don’t get strawberry flavored drinks. Chocolate drinks have real chocolate, and vanilla drinks are flavored with vanilla extract, but strawberry drinks rarely contain real strawberries. This shouldn’t be that way.
Today we’re making a lovely strawberry latte, and yes, we’re using fresh strawberries.
Let me tell you a bit more about this pink concoction. When people say latte, I think of coffee, but if you think outside the box, any flavored, frothy, milky drink is a latte, and that opens our eyes to endless possibilities.
Strawberries and dairy are delicious together, think of strawberries and cream, which is precisely my inspiration for this strawberry latte. For that, we’ll need strawberries, of course, so pick yourself fresh, organic, ripe strawberries.
Be careful; strawberries are amongst the Dirty Dozen list for contaminated fruit. Actually, the red berries top the list for all the amounts of pesticides and chemical residues in them, so please spend a little more and go organic.
Strawberries alone are not enough to make ourselves the best strawberry-scented drink we can, so we’ll be mixing them with sugar, a technique that will allow all the juices in the fruit to come forward, and the flavors intensify.
We’ll be using half and half too, which is creamier than whole milk and gives all my lattes a decadent mouthfeel. Heat half and half, but don’t boil it; it will lose its texture if you do.
Do you know what’s better than a creamy latte? A creamier latte, which is why we’re adding condensed milk too, which will also act as our sweetener. You can always add a little sugar if you want to, but I’m guessing you won’t need it. The candied strawberries are also playing a part as a sweetener.
There you have it, four ingredients for an all-natural, sweet strawberry latte you’ll want to make every day. Serve this one with vanilla cookies or a bowl of fresh strawberries if you have some left.
Don’t forget to share this recipe with your friends. Let’s get past artificial strawberry syrups at last and celebrate fresh fruit!
Cut the strawberries in small pieces and add the sugar. Let the strawberries rest for at least 30 minutes.
Warm the half and half and condensed milk in a saucepan without boiling.
Add all the ingredients in a bowl and blend with a hand blender until smooth and frothy.
Serve into a mug.
