Homemade Mocha Cookie Crumble Frappuccino

The Mocha Cookie Crumble Frappuccino is a summertime offering from Starbucks that is a favorite with chocolate-loving customers. It’s mocha with a hint of cookies n’ cream – and that is a great combination in just about any form that it comes in. A regular frappuccino might be good when you want to indulge on the go, but it is pretty easy to whip up an at-home version that can hold its own when it comes to flavor.

My Homemade Mocha Cookie Crumble Frappuccino is made with equal parts strong coffee and milk, cocoa powder, sugar and crushed chocolate wafer cookies. Oreos work just as well as plain chocolate wafer cookies, so use those if you have some on hand instead of hunting through the market to find the plain wafers. I prefer to use cocoa powder and sugar, but if you have some chocolate sauce that will also work well. All of the ingredients are blended until smooth then, like the drink that inspired it, it is topped with whipped cream and cookie crumbles.

The Starbucks version of this frappuccino is topped of with chocolate whipped cream. You can easily make a quick chocolate whipped cream by folding some chocolate sauce into some whipped cream. I happen to like vanilla whipped cream as a contrast to the mocha frappuccino and the chocolaty crumbles on top, so that is what I went with here.
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Banana Mocha Ice Blended

A few years ago, the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf offered a summer drink called the Banana Caramel Ice Blended. It was essentially a caramel ice blended coffee drink with banana added to it. A few years before that, Starbucks had a Banana Mocha Frappuccino on their menu that was very similar. These drinks only lasted the season, but they had quite a few fans – including some friends of mine who are reminded of them every time they’re in the mood for a frappuccino. Fortunately, with a blender, some bananas and some coffee, I was able to put together an acceptable substitute to hold them over until they reappear on menu boards.

This Banana Mocha Ice Blended starts out like a regular blended mocha drink with a whole banana added to it. The banana alone might not seem like it goes well with coffee, but both coffee and bananas go very well with chocolate, and the three work together beautifully when combined. The drink is creamy, with a nice coffee kick and some extra sweetness from the banana. It’s very refreshing and the banana adds just enough of a nutritional punch that you could justify drinking one of these for breakast as well as an afternoon pick-me-up.

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Salt and Pepper Mocha

If you want to make your sweetheart something that is a little sweet and a little spicy for Valentine’s Day this year, try making a Salt and Pepper Mocha. This drink has a little kick to it – courtesy of Trader Joe’s Organic Stone Ground Salt and Pepper Dark Chocolate. This is a coarsely ground, Mexican-style chocolate that TJ’s has been selling recently and it is perfect for making a grown up mocha or hot chocolate.

The chocolate comes in discs and it is easy to break up into pieces by hand. The chocolate has a very crumbly texture and, while you definitely get a sweet and fruity dark chocolate with your first taste, the salt and pepper flavors are very distinct. This gives the chocolate a savory, spicy quality that is a nice change of pace from other chocolates – and from other mocha drinks. I melted half a disc of the chocolate into a mug of hot coffee, then topped it off with hot, steamed milk to make my mocha. The coffee goes extremely well with the salt and pepper flavors in the chocolate, so the drink only needed a touch of milk to round it out. If you’re not a big dark chocolate fan, or simply prefer your mochas a little bit sweeter, feel free to stir in a bit more sugar than I used.

If you want to try this but don’t have access to the Salt and Pepper Chocolate, don’t worry. Simply substitute the same amount of dark chocolate and add a generous pinch of salt, along with a slightly smaller pinch of pepper, until the chocolate has a little kick to it.

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White Chocolate Truffle Latte

There are all kinds of mocha and dark chocolate drinks out there. They’re delicious – no doubt about it – but sometimes I think that white chocolate is slightly underrepresented. I like white chocolate and there are plenty of coffee drinks that you can make using it, as well, but you might have to look a little bit harder to find inspiration than you do with regular mocha recipes. In this case, I found inspiration in a box of chocolates.

The first time I made this drink, I had a bunch of white chocolate truffles in my kitchen and simply popped them into my coffee. The white chocolate added a really nice sweetness to the drink, and the truffles melted smoothly. It is a must-try if you already have white chocolate truffles around, but a very quick and easy chocolate ganache lets me make this drink over and over again even if I don’t have some in the house already.

You can make this with strong coffee, or you can make it with espresso. I think that espresso is the way to go, since you get a slightly more intense coffee flavor, but more milk that will pick up on the richness of the truffles. If you are going for the coffee option and using whole truffles, you might find that you want to add one extra to sweeten it up a bit.

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Peppermint Bark Mocha

Peppermint Bark is a very popular Christmas and wintertime chocolate treat. It typically consists of layers of dark and white chocolate studded with bits of peppermint. Some have more chocolate than others, and some have more mint, but they all get the same chocolate and mint combination across. Peppermint mochas are already a popular winter drink in coffee shops and, after getting a huge box of peppermint bark as a pre-holiday gift, I decided to use it as a base for my own peppermint mochas.

The recipe is easy: melt peppermint bark into hot coffee, top with milk and serve. You can garnish it with a peppermint stick, if you like, or just munch on any unused peppermint bark while your sip your holiday drink.

The amount of peppermint bark you will need for this recipe will vary, depending on the type of bark you have and how minty it is. Start with the 2-oz I recommend and go up from there as needed. If you need to add more, just go ahead and do it. You can always reheat your drink a little bit in the microwave to ensure that it is hot enough to melt all the chocolate.
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