The Future of Coffee: Chemex Coffee Filter

My father is a coffee connoisseur. With that burden, he taught me the proper way to prepare and enjoy my coffee, that being with a coffee press. Before I left for college, he bought me an 8-cup bodum french press. And since then, my coffee press was never far from me. While I was in China, I missed fresh French press coffee so much that my parents attempted to ship to me. When the box finally reached me, it was 

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Dark Roast Coffee Gelee: Dessert for a Morning Wake Up

Looks just like the picture above, right?

Ever since I saw this recipe on epicurious, I've been dying to make a dark roast coffee gelee. Luckily I had some gelatin packets left from my panna cotta experiment, and of course my handy dandy french press, so I knew I was good to go. 

I generally tend to crave savory foods, as opposed to sweet ones. But, thinking about the cupcakes I made yesterday was getting to be too much to ignore. Luckily, I had the gelee waiting in the fridge for a low calorie, sweet-tooth-satisfying pick-me-up to keep me going until lunch.

And forgive the unyielding structure of my coffee gelee. I had originally planned on setting it in glasses, similar to the ones in the picture above. But then I thought to myself, I bet I could just mold it into a nice shape in some coffee mugs. Obviously that was not the case.

Dark Roast Coffee Gelee

Note: I've adapted the recipe slightly, substituting white sugar for a mix of raw agave and an agave blend syrup, both from Trader Joe's. I think it made the flavor a little more mellow, and maybe a little sweeter than with white sugar (mellow, yet sweeter. It makes sense in my mind and in my mouth).

Ingredients:
2 1/4 C dark roast coffee (made from 6 tablespoons finely ground dark-roast coffee beans) plus 1 T cold water
1/4 C raw agave
1/4 C syrup (or Trader Joe's agave syrup blend)
1 1/2 t unflavored gelatin (from one 1/4-oz envelope)
2 t vanilla


Method:

Brew ground coffee in french press.

Sprinkle gelatin over 1 tablespoon cold water and let rest for one minute. Add the the hot coffee, agave, syrup, and vanilla to the gelatin mixture, stirring until dissolved.

Pour into glass tumblers or a gelatin mold. Chill, covered, until softly set, for at least 8 hours.

Morning Brew - Coffee for One

Recently I've been waking up extremely early, meaning 5-6am. This means that in order not to pass out before I make it out the door around 8:30-9am I need to get my early morning coffee on. As a college student, your corner coffee brewery is an unavoidable evil. The temptation to walk in like the zombie-of-a-man from the McDonald's commercial who can not even fathom talking to another human being before his morning cup o' joe is unbearable. However, being completely broke is more unbearable, at least in my opinion. So I've made it my duty to replicate our beloved coffee houses' most loved creations. First off, a more elegant take on a simple cup of coffee.

I use a french press to make my coffee. It is cheaper than a coffee maker, whether it's a chefmate or a cuisinart or an espresso maker with a name I can't even pronounce. And often times, the flavor is bolder, deeper and significantly better than anything coming out of one of those overpriced machines. You can get a nice one for $25 and it will last you for your whole college career (validity of that statement pending me graduating next May).

I also purchase my beans from Trader Joe's. If I lived in New York I would buy all of my coffee beans from Fairway, this awesome grocery store, and probably one of the most famous in the world, on the upper West Side of Manhattan, right next to the Hudson River, but for now, Trader Joe's carries a great variety, ranging from your cheaper Seattle Blends to the decadent $40/pound Jamaica Blue Mountain variety. I've settled for the $6.99 Costa Rican Tarrazu, a medium dark roast bean. There is also a bean grinder in the store, so I grind them up right there (if you decide to go for a french press, get them a little coarser so you don't have to worry about the grinds finding their way through the filter).

Because my boyfriend is not a coffee drinker, I try to brew as little as possible at one time, which is hard as I tend to over estimate how much I'll be drinking. Recently, I've been keeping it to just two tablespoons. On the weekends I'll do a full six and fill it up with boiling water. Feel free to add more or less grinds, more or less water, depending on how strong you like your brew.

Now for the recipe.

Ingredients:
1 French Press
~1-1/2 C boiling water
2 T coarse coffee grinds
1/8 t almond extract
2 T whipped cream
1 T chocolate sauce

Method:
1. Add the coffee grinds to the french press while the water is boiling. Once it has come to a boil, pour  into the french press, stir, and let sit for about 5 minutes (more or less time depending on your preference of the strength of the coffee).
2. pour coffee into a cup, add the almond extract and stir. Top with whipped cream and chocolate sauce.

For Iced Coffee:

1. Stick a glass in the freezer before step 1 and fill it with ice.

2. After the grinds have been soaking in the boiling water in the french press for 5 minutes, stash the french press in the freeze for another 5-10 minutes.

3. Remove the press from the freezer, pour the coffee into another glass to add the extract, and any cream of sugar (I like to use raw agave as it blends better in both hot and especially in cold coffee).

4. Remove the glass from the freezer and pour the coffee blend into the glass, top with whipped cream and chocolate sauce

The extract  adds a nice flavor to the coffee. Any flavor extract can be used, and if you have syrup, even better. The whipped cream and chocolate sauce make it feel more like it's being made my a highly-trained barista, rather than in a tiny apartment kitchen.

Even better so, the combined cost of all of the ingredients, less the investment of the french press, bring the total cost to $0.74*. Moreover, for myself this total cost includes the recipe above, plus a regular, plain cup of coffee. The price of the equivalent at Starbucks would come to about $2.55**. That is a savings for $1.81 in just one day. If you do this 5 days a week for a year that is savings of $470.60.  You can do your own coffee calculations to see how much you could be saving.

Enjoy

*by my calculations:
2 T coffee = $0.54
1/8 t almond extract = $0.04
2 T whipped cream = $0.08
1 T chocolate sauce = $0.08

**
$1.75 for a tall (small) plain coffee
$1.75 + $0.30 (styrup, and I'm being generous by counting this toward the extract and the chocolate syrup on top) + $0.50 = $2.55