The twentieth drink of my book as a bev series is an iced oat thai tea latte topped with a spiced cold foam. This bev is based on my brother’s hardback copy of Dune by Frank Herbert with pretty blue sprayed edges.
Fun fact: I’ve never read Dune, and my potentially scalding take is that when I attempted to watch the film, I couldn’t finish it. I wonder if my gripes with the film aren’t as present in the book. I plan to give it a chance and find out.
This beverage’s name is:
‘the spiced sip’
Name Explained: One of the few things I know about the world of Dune is that on the fictional planet Arrakis, where the story partially takes place, there’s something called spice and that it is of value. How exactly it’s used and what it does I’m not sure, but it was the inspiration for the name of this drink since I didn’t have much to go on, haha.
Thai Tea Base: The cover features a lot of orange hues and I felt the best way to bring that out, whilst adding some depth of flavor to the beverage, was to use Thai tea. I sweetened it with condensed milk to avoid brightening it too much and passed some oat milk through the steeped tea leaves to give them a slightly orange hue as well.
Coffee: I went with a basic bold brew for my two shots of coffee. Adding any syrups or sweeteners to it felt risky given the rest of the drink would be doing the heavy lifting in that department.
Spiced Cold Foam: In the first iteration of this drink I used a plethora of spices, but the end result was a flavor that clashed too much with the rest of the drink. So, this final version only incorporated some cinnamon and turmeric both of which you can taste, and helped to contribute to the final color of the foam. The predominant color of the foam comes from the blue spirulina powder which is there for its hue only, as it’s tasteless.
RATING: Overall I’d give the final drink a 4.45.
Flavor Combination: This drink out came out slightly sweet, nothing overwhelming. The Thai tea did have a very dominant role so I wouldn’t say it was perfectly balanced, but everything tasted good together. The foam wasn’t sweet at all, and each component in it blended together into a nice taste that’s hard to compare to something else.
Ease: This drink was fairly easy to make. The only thing you have to wait for is the time it takes to steep the tea, and allowing it to cool so that the beverage can be enjoyed chilled.
Appearance: I nearly failed in my first attempt at assembling this beverage because the foam ended up a little more liquid and caused the layers to blend together. In the final version I added more cream to counter that and was happy with the result. The only problem with doing so was that the final color ended up brightening a tad and so it wasn’t a perfect color match for the book, so I docked a fraction off the score. The orange and brown layers came out just as I’d envisioned though.
Ways to Improve: As mentioned before, the Thai tea was slightly dominant, so moving forward I would steep slightly less – that would help with the questionable caffeine content in this drink as well, haha. As for the actual flavors in the spices and its sweetness I would leave all of that as is.
Links to all items used:
Glass Jars (alternative): https://amzn.to/4dvJGmS
Thai Tea Mix (exact): https://amzn.to/47ixEJQ
Oat Milk (exact): https://amzn.to/4bujcRv
Condensed Milk (exact): Organic Sweetened Condensed Milk – Trader Joe’s (could not find a link for some reason, sorry!)
Condensed Milk (alternative): https://amzn.to/45fnvfp
Coffee (exact): https://amzn.to/3RJQ2qt
Whole Milk (exact): https://tgleedairy.com/products/whole-milk-plastic-quart/
Heavy Whipping Cream (exact): https://www.publix.com/pd/publix-whipping-cream-heavy/RIO-PCI-112684
Blue Spirulina (exact): https://amzn.to/4uJnufv
Cinnamon Powder (exact): https://amzn.to/4vGGbPY
Turmeric Powder (exact): https://amzn.to/47lVaWq
Agave (exact): https://amzn.to/4bsnabU
This post contains some affiliate links which means a commission may be received, at no extra cost to you, if you make a purchase through a link.
A video showing the process should be up soon~
Thanks for reading, have a great week!
~ C.C.
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