The Ultimate Pumpkin Spice Latte

summer is gone the nights are closing the leaves are changing it must be time for

pumpkin

spice

latte

and it is and today we are going to make the best

pumpkin

spice

latte

but to start I have a point of reference, I'm going to go to Starbucks and buy one, so we're in Tower Bridge because this is where the best Starbucks in London is and it seems like the best place to go and buy one of these and try the ginger, a little bit of cinnamon and the other. the spices are very sweet, incredibly sweet, technically there is some pumpkin in the pumpkin spice latte for reasons I don't really understand, so now I want to make my own definitive version of this, if we are going to put pumpkin in this well , we should figure out what pumpkin we should put in it, so we'll go to the city market, try to buy a bunch of pumpkins and then we'll go back to the studio and start cooking them overseas, let's start with the pumpkins and I know it's a little strange. because I'm pretty sure pumpkin spice lattes started out without pumpkin, they were like a latte with the spice blend that people use for pumpkin pie and that's a classic spice blend that we'll touch on in a minute, but at some point people started putting pumpkin in the drink, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, what I was doing, I think it was all wrong, let me explain to you, the original idea of ​​the video was to make a sauce that tasted just like pumpkin pie, this is actually a popular approach online and

ultimate

ly I don't think it's the right approach for me.

You know, I wanted to find the perfect pumpkin flavor. A lot of different ones use it to create a pumpkin puree, but when I was sifting my blended pumpkin puree. I just wasn't happy, I felt like I was making other people's jobs harder and there had to be a new and different approach now that this whole thing had started when I went to the website and looked at Starbucks' ingredients for their pumpkin spice dip and it was You can see things like pumpkin puree or condensed milk there, but I was obsessed with this, a small sample of the syrup that they had given me at Starbucks.

This, apart from having a tremendous color, well, it doesn't have pumpkin puree, it's a clear sauce, it doesn't have condensed milk, and then I noticed that this year they are launching in the UK a sort of vegan version because if you try it, it's actually like a cinnamon syrup with a hint of some other spices. but I liked the idea of ​​something that worked for everyone, something that didn't exclude people who don't want to drink dairy now. I love the color of that, but I also love the color of pumpkins and because of that, what I want.

What I do is capture some of that pumpkin color, but I don't want solids, I don't want pumpkin puree, I don't want to have to cook pumpkin chunks, none of that interests me, so what are we going to do? from the beginning it's the juice of a pumpkin, what will make this recipe notable, I think is the selection of spices, so pumpkin spice mix is ​​a kind of pre-made spice mix that you can buy in bulk part of us and that contains five different spices that we will delve into. I'll get spices in just a second, but to start, I'll take one of these pumpkins, juice it, and that'll be the start of all of this.

Now, when you're squeezing a pumpkin, you know you're going to do it. you will get a yield of about 50 if you squeeze 100 grams of pumpkin pulp you will get about 50 grams a little less juice so when you look at the recipe and decide how much of this mixture you want to make that will decide how much pumpkin you want to start with no you need one that big you can opt for something much smaller like some kombucha if you like the flavor there is a little more this jar is very big I am not going to use all of it Anyway, I will start with about 500 grams of pumpkin pulp for obtain about 250 grams of pumpkin juice.

I'm someone who thinks about things through the lens of coffee, so the idea that different spices should taste different if they're grown in different places, that makes a lot of sense to me, so I went out and bought a bunch. of different spices from different origins with all the traceability I could find. At the end of this there will be links to these in particular. spices next, so the most important component of a pumpkin spice blend traditionally is cinnamon. Now you can use two ways with cinnamon. You can use traditional cinnamon stick root or you can use what is called cassia bark.

Now I want to use both because they have two. Quite different characteristics of cinnamon, the cassia bark in this case is from Vietnam, it smells incredible, it's that kind of sweet cinnamon, it's that candy-shaped cinnamon, that spicy cinnamon, very bright, lively and spicy, almost cartoony, you know what I mean, almost artificial. but incredibly good but it needs a little balance and what I loved about these are Sri Lankan cinnamon picks is that you get that warmer, slightly earthier, slightly rounder cinnamon experience, they are absolutely cinnamon but it's something totally different and by combining equal parts of these two we get this. broad spectrum of flavors and aromatics of cinnamon that is incredibly pleasant, so the second ingredient that is really important is ginger.

This is something I tried pretty hard in the Starbucks drink, although I could have put it in there with my mind, it's hard to find much traceable powdered ginger. What I tried came from India and that was the heavier, almost earthier type of ginger, this one from China, I really liked it, it was a little more aromatic, spicier, fresher, brighter, still, a little heat from there too, really very nice, so that's going to be our secondary component the nail is difficult for me, I had a kind of accident with a kind of super critical extract of the clothes that marked me for life.

I find the smell and taste quite challenging and

ultimate

ly clothes easily overwhelm everything so we I'm going to use these very sparingly these are from Sri Lanka many also come from Indonesia but I slightly prefer these from Sri Lanka, all that spice you want from cloves, but almost a little sweeter, which was very nice. Now nutmeg is one of my favorite spices just because it looks so beautiful when you open it. This one is from a French company called Episode, I think it's from Granada and it smells amazing. Now, this particular one you should grind fresh or excellent. fresh in many dishes because it fades very quickly, but we are coffee people, we are used to grinding things to ask for the last spice in the mix is ​​allspice, I don't know much about this, I have a hard time finding much variety and the ones I got really there wasn't a huge variation so don't stress too much, looking for the perfect allspice was my experience so far, like I said we are coffee people, we think like coffee people, what are you going to do?

This whole recipe is much more interesting is that we are going to grind our spice mix to order now, maybe like me, you have an old blade grinder lying around and that is completely perfect, this is just a cheap, cut-down one, I think it was about 15 pounds, that's what we're going to use today, all in the grinder, grind until it's a nice fine powder, it may take a little bit of time and shake it now again as you move on to the next stage where we're going to make . the spiced syrup we're going to take our weight of pumpkin juice here and we're going to add an equal amount of water use the same jug, okay now the final syrup we're looking for is going to be more like a two to one syrup where it's two parts of sugar and hot water, but to start we'll do it one by one, so here I have about 450 grams of liquid, so I'm going to take 450 grams of demerara sugar.

You can give us something a little more golden if you want, but I thought it would be golden enough to soften a little bit that we like and then we'll cook it to reduce it until it's closer to a two to one syrup. That cooking process will transform the flavor of the pumpkin juice from a very fresh green but slightly vegetal flavor to a more cooked flavor and will be quite dull as the flavor disappears when it's all done and We're going to add to this about 20 grams of the spice mix and we're going to cook it all together, on the stove and we'll give it a little whisk to stir and dissolve the sugar, so we'll cook things now, but the important phase we need is a little bit of separation.

I don't want any bits in my syrup. Now I'm a little unusual and I have a very fine drum sieve lying around because I'm a little unusual, so I'll pass. Through this it's about 90 microns it's extremely fine but it would be perfectly acceptable to use something like cheesecloth or muslin and then once strained and happy you can transfer it to your squeeze bottle we're ready let's make a drink not now it is. It is completely up to me to tell you how much syrup to use. I'm not too into sweet things, so in what is an eight ounce drink, I'm going to max out about 15 grams of syrup that I'm just going to mix into my espresso before adding my steamed milk.

Now at this point you could use some type of non-dairy milk, it depends on what you like, whether it's oatmeal or something else. Having a lovely and very simple little experience can be too sweet for some people. for some people it's not sweet enough, the spice level is very nice and very balanced, even with dairy, in this particular drink you can get extra layers of complexity and kind of flavor release that comes with some really great spices coming from from different parts of the world. I absolutely beg you to go and find some interesting spices from different places.

Taste the difference. It's revealing. What I haven't done yet was make a direct comparison between what I have here and what I have here with a small sample from Starbucks. syrup, what a color, a very simplistic kind of cinnamon, a lot of cloves that I'm just not personally chasing, an interesting acidity, I suspect that might be part of its preservative component, you know, let's compare it to something a little more traceable. homemade aromatic worlds apart so much complexity warmth depth breadth of flavor space for each of those spices to come out that's very good that's really good because it has good ingredients is the lesson that I hope coffee teaches us all what the good ingredients are is kind of a key to everything else, we can go further, we should look at a more complete version of this now, if you're curious about some of what's going on here, there are links below, there's a recipe linked on a website. a website that I built with this video sponsor that is squarespace when it comes time to create a website I always turn to squarespace no matter if it is a website for myself and a portfolio of the work that I do or if it is for an event like the largest coffee tasting in the world or an exhibition of my book the world coffee atlas for me is so easy that I can start with one of their templates and very quickly transform it into something that is truly mine my words my images my style very quickly , you can go from an idea to a beautiful representation of who you are or what you do online and more than that, once the website is live, you know that it will look good in any and all browsers and there is nothing that update or install.

There's no maintenance to really worry about but there is 24/7 email support, I'd say don't take my word for it, sign up for the trial below, build something and when you're ready to go use code james hoffman for 10 from any website or any domain thanks to squarespace for sponsoring this video so the last part of this brewed drink to make it the best pumpkin spice latte is going to be some whipped cream now , maybe, like me, that puts you off a little because at this point we have quite a bit of milk of some kind plus sugar and spices, the coffee is being washed out by all the other things going on here and having whipped cream on top, well, that's probably it.

It's only going to make things worse, so this is what we're going to do, we're going to make a special coffee-infused whipped cream on top to make it extremely delicious. Just think of this as a pumpkin spice latte topped with some almost coffee ice cream. To start, we are only going to use 10 liquids. ounces or 280 mils more of double cream to that we are going to add the seeds and half a vanilla bean, you could use paste if you wanted, but if you have a vanilla bean lying around, it is quite used. we break it in two and then for the whipped cream, I usually like about five percent by weight of sugar, just white sugar is totally fine and then we'll add 10 grams of fairly coarsely ground coffee.

We want it nice and easy to strain later, so don't bother making it too fine, it will lose its flavor pretty quickly and be delicious. Throw it on the heat gently to warm it up a little bit and get a little bit of infusion, so once it's ready, you're just going to strain it so it gets a really nice color, then this is going to go into your siphon for blending, I'm going to cool it down, load it up and then we will beready for the preparation of the final drink, foment my milk, we will simply get our syrup now when it comes to steaming the milk, if you are going to add whipped cream, know that your foam will still be lighter than the whipped cream, so That the whipped cream will stick to the foam, so you want as little foam as possible. you can get away with a nice silky texture that you could use for a flat white or a latte.

We also don't have to worry about the latte and then a little dusting of our spices and what we have here is an oozing, decadent deliciousness, there's a lovely little shot of coffee in front of that sweet vanilla coffee cold cream and then that kind of warm spice underneath it's sweet but not overpowering it's autumnal let's see what you want fall tastes a little messy but it's just delicious there's the best pumpkin spice latte I'm very pleased with the result. If you wanted to make the whipped cream, but a vegan version using, for example, coconut, do the same in terms of the amount of coffee, the amount of sugar, and the amount of vanilla bean added in there.

I will have a very similar result. Did it taste like pumpkin? No, it doesn't really count as one of my five a day, still probably not. It was also delicious. It was fun to do. It was interesting. It was beautiful. I think so and I think you. You should try it too. I think it's very interesting for me to look at other ingredients through the lens of coffee, to think about spices like you think about coffee, and in doing so, I learned a lot, discovered what I like, discovered a whole new range of flavors and I got a final result that, while many consider garbage, I think it shows a kind of flavor of the place, it shows providence, it shows some transparency in its flavors and I think it's great as well as being incredibly delicious, but let me know what you think, let me know if you try this, let me know what you think, let me know if you're struggling to find some spices you like, let me know if you try the spices a little and your jaw drops like mine was.

I'd love to hear from all of you in the comments below. There is a link to the recipe with all the ingredients in the description, but for now I'll say thank you very much for watching and I hope you have a great day.