A Perfect Match: Iced Coffee and Middle School Girls

Today was mission Sunday at church, and many of our youth led worship. The middle school choir, to which Miss Priss now belongs (Did I just type middle school? Yikes! But that's material for another post.), sang at two of our morning services. A few days ago, the choir director asked choir parents to bring in some breakfast things for the kids to snack on between services, so I signed up to bring pumpkin muffins and, in a moment of misplaced inspiration, iced coffee. The middle school choir is made up entirely of girls, and iced coffee is so sophisticated, so Starbucks, I thought they'd enjoy it.

I say "misplaced inspiration" for two reasons. One, this was also a horse show weekend. But since I am Superwoman, I can do all things. Two, simply making coffee and serving it with milk and sugar over ice wasn't going to cut it. I had to go all out. Which is why I was surfing the Internet yesterday afternoon, buying the ingredients, and making the stuff last night AND this morning at 7 AM.

I prefer to try completely new recipes at the eleventh hour. I live on the edge.

And sometimes, like today, it works out fabulously.

The recipe, Perfect Iced Coffee, comes from The Pioneer Woman website. Since she's a much funnier and better writer than I, I direct you to her post and recipe. (I opted for decaf coffee: Cafe Bustelo dark roast for espresso, to be specific.) Read her whole post; it's a hoot.

But of course I had to kick it up a notch. So I brought a gallon of the coffee base, a half gallon of half and half, and three bottles of Coffee Mate's all-new Natural Bliss creamers: vanilla, caramel, and sweet cream. To serve each girl, I filled a glass (okay, a styrofoam coffee cup, because that's what was available) half full of ice cubes, poured in the coffee base til the cup was half full, splashed in some half and half, and then added the chosen creamer flavor to each girl's desired level of sweetness, which was, shockingly (not!), pretty sweet. Surprisingly, only one went with caramel; everyone else chose vanilla. (Note: to serve adults, I'd fill each glass about 3/4 full of coffee base.)

If you follow Ree's recipe, you're going to end up with a vat of the coffee base, as I did. I now have a pitcher in my fridge, a half-full gallon jug in my freezer, and another half-full gallon jug in my garage fridge to take to my sister on Tuesday. If you'd like, you could make coffee ice cubes to use in your libation so it won't get all watery from regular ice cubes. Ree also offers a wonderful-sounding variation, Vietnamese Iced Coffee, made with sweetened condensed milk. Now that I've got to try.

The choir girls loved their individualized iced coffees so much that I was elevated to rock-star status for about three minutes. Then everything went back to normal, and I was just another minivan-driving mom.

But since I was sipping my own cup of perfection, I was okay with that.