Latte Envy

Over the last few weeks I’ve heard a lot of my friends rejoicing about the return of various holiday-flavored drinks to their favorite coffee houses. As if that isn’t enough, I see tweets and Facebook status updates about various faraway friends who are sipping pumpkin spice lattes and peppermint lattes.

Normally, I’m just fine drinking my Earl Grey with a bit of milk, or the occasional hot chocolate or chai tea, but lately, I’ll admit to a bit of latte envy. After all, it’s the holiday season! Where are all the exciting hot drinks for us non-coffee drinkers?

A few weeks ago, after mentioning this to a friend, she suggested I try a London Fog, a drink she said her coffeehouse regularly prepared. Well of course, my local coffeehouse didn’t have one. The London Fog is made by placing one tea bag in a bit of boiling water, until it gets really strong. Then, you mix the tea in with a cup of hot milk, to which you add a shot of vanilla syrup. Since I couldn’t get it out, I tried making it at home, and it’s really quite tasty.

My favorite local coffeehouse does make what they call an Earl Grey Latte. Their version involves just 1/2 milk and 1/2 hot water, and they add a shot of almond syrup to the mix. It’s also pretty good, and easy to make at home.

But I’m still very curious about those pumpkin lattes and peppermint lattes. In fact, so curious that I started searching for non-coffee recipes on the web. I did find several recipes for non-coffee pumpkin lattes, but nothing for peppermint lattes.

The recipe I found for a non-coffee pumpkin latte at All Recipes.com includes the following ingredients:

Ingredients

• * 1 cup pumpkin puree
  * 1 quart milk
  * 1/4 cup white sugar
  * 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  * 1 tablespoon vanilla extract

You heat all of the ingredients in a pan, stirring regularly with a whisk. Now I love pumpkin, but am not sure if this really sounds good. In fact, I’m thinking it might be easier to just buy a small bottle of pumpkin spice syrup and give that a try. But I’ve come up empty on the peppermint latte front.

Do you have any favorite non-coffee hot drinks? If so, what’s your favorite?

LinnieGayl