If you’ve ever wandered the coffee aisle in the grocery store, you might have noticed that there are a lot of different coffees that Starbucks stores don’t carry. From decaf Verona, to Bright Sky blend, it’s a whole new coffee world to explore. My friend Melody asked me to put together a recipe for one of the CPG (consumer packaged goods) products, and I saw the newly redesigned bag of the Cinnamon Dolce flavored coffee, and I thought this might be perfect.
When I was on vacation a few weeks ago, I had an incredible bread pudding for dessert at Chesapeake and Main (I almost never order dessert, but I couldn’t resist.) It was a cinnamon bread pudding with caramel, carrot cream cheese and crème fraîche. I kind of wanted to do a play on that along with the snickerdoodle hot chocolate, because honestly, white chocolate + cinnamon dolce is an excellent combination!
This is a quick and easy recipe to put together, and as always, you can easily adjust this to make something totally new! What about Caffe Verona with dark chocolate? So many possibilities! 🙂
This is a pre-ground blond roast coffee, with a buttery cinnamon flavor, much like the taste of a cinnamon dolce latte. You’ll notice on the bag, that they recommend a different proportion for brewing. Instead of 2 tablespoons for every 6 ounces of water, they recommend to use 1 1/2 tablespoons for every 6 ounces of water. Of course I have to taste test this!
I brewed two cups, one using the standard proportion, 2 tablespoons for every 6 ounces, and on the right is using the recommended dose of 1.5 tablespoons coffee for every 6 ounces of water. You can see that the cup on the right is much lighter, and I personally found it to be too light for me. Then again, I am a dark roast kind of girl.
Overall, I don’t mind this coffee at all. It smells incredible. I made a cup, and my husband walked in the kitchen and said “Wow it smells amazing in here!!” It really fills up the entire room with a sweet cinnamon flavor. The taste is not bad either, doesn’t taste fake or artificial at all! I knew this would be a great coffee to cook with because of its light body, and sweet buttery flavor.
This coffee can be found in most grocery stores. I got mine at Kroger, but they also have it at Target, Safeway, and other major retailers. You will even be able to earn 10 bonus stars onto your Starbucks account!
Cinnamon Dolce Latte Bread Pudding
Author: Jocelyn Freeman
- 1½ cups whole milk
- 1 cup brewed Starbucks Cinnamon Dolce coffee, cooled
- 1 box (3.4 oz) vanilla flavor pudding & pie filling
- 3 cups french bread cubes
- 4 oz white chocolate, cut into chunks
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
- Pre heat oven to 375 degrees
- In a large bowl, pour the milk and coffee. Add the pudding mixture and whisk until well blended. Stir in the bread cubes, white chocolate and vanilla.
- Pour into a 1 quart baking dish.
- Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until the mixture comes to a boil. Remove from oven and let stand for 10 minutes before serving.
This article originally appeared on TheModernBarista.com.
Reprinted on StarbucksMelody.com with permission by TheModernBarista:
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Note by StarbucksMelody.com:
I decided to see if I could re-create the above bread pudding at home. I gathered up some ingredients:
I decided that I would brew the coffee using the Sowden Softbrew, which is one of the easiest to use brewing methods around. It’s an immersion technique. Like theModernBarista.com, I used the standard brewing ration of 2 tablespoons of coffee for every six ounces of water.
Right now the Sowden Softbrew is back inside Starbucks stores. The magic of the Sowden Softbrew is the metallic filter. It’s designed so that you can use a variety of levels of coffee grind, and still get a great cup of coffee. This is super easy. No special pouring in a circle. Just measure the coffee, boiling water, and set your timer for 4 minutes. By the way, Sowden did not ask or somehow entice me to mention them here: I just really love my Sowden Softbrew and use it all the time at home. It is an immersion brew technique, so a coarse grind would be traditional but you can use this slightly finer grind of the Cinnamon Dolce coffee with the Sowden.
No matter what brew method you choose, I strongly suggest that you follow the four fundamentals of a great cup of coffee.
I tried this recipe twice at home. The first time I used the standard coffee recipe and added white chocolate too soon and ended up with totally melted white chocolate. I liked the second version of my bread pudding better. Here’s how I made mine the second time:
- I brewed the coffee double strength. That is I used 2 tablespoons of coffee for every 3 ounces of water.
- I whisked together the coffee, milk, and pudding mix.
- I added 3 heaping (close to 4 cups) of bread squares and vanilla extract into the coffee, milk, and pudding mix.
- The coffee, milk, pudding, bread squares, and vanilla extract all were mixed together and heated together in my slow cooker on high. I know my slow cooker really well (I use it all the time). Slow cookers can really vary a lot. On “slow cook high” mine will be at a low boil after about 90 minutes to 2 hours.
- I let it cool. I added the white chocolate at the very end after it cooled off enough that it would NOT just melt into everything else.
Nonetheless, I hope this gives you some ideas for making more bread pudding at home! I love Jocelyn’s idea of playing with the recipe. I think Verona and some whiskey sauce could be very interesting!
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