The Spice Of Life

Notes on pleasant everyday

I’ve been writing some longer, more serious Saturday pieces here the last few weeks, so I wanted to write something shorter and lighter this week. I discovered, prompted by the sudden and apparently real shift to fall weather, that it’s not hard to make an 80-percent-good imitation of a pumpkin spice latte at home.

I was going through the spice rack, neatening it up and putting away some of the stuff we rarely use so there’s a little more space. And I found, hidden behind some yeast packets from when I attempted bread a couple of times (every single time it rises about half as much as it should, and ends up dense with a hard, tap-tap crust), the pumpkin spice extract from one time we made a pie, and a sealed bottle of maple syrup extract, which was being cleared out at a deep discount at the supermarket awhile ago.

These extracts are things that feel like they should have a lot of uses, but they never do. Kind of like those fancy infused vinegars from those tasting/taproom oil and vinegar shops. Grilled glazed shrimp! Bright salad! Brush it on roasted veggies! We almost always end up mixing them with seltzer to make tangy sodas, because there are so few cooking uses where they taste just right—or where you can detect their flavor at all.

But it occurred to me that just a few drops of these extracts in coffee might emulate that typical pumpkin spice flavor. “Fall flavor,” really, because it isn’t pumpkin, but who cares? Who needs to break down and interrogate and ironically or “unironically” like stuff when you can just, you know, like it? Not unironically, but unselfconsciously. Earnestly.

I have a $20 milk frothing wand that does a decent job. And we have a 1980s (I think) drip coffee machine that my parents replaced with a newer model but that still works fine. And a pretty good burr grinder with a lot of settings. If you take a medium-dark roast whole bean coffee, grind it on the fine side, and brew it strong, poured over some frothed milk, it is, to my taste, indistinguishable from half of the coffee-shop cappuccinos or lattes I’ve ever had.

And then, to that faux-latte, just add a few drops of each extract. I think they’re free of actual sugar, but like really good seltzers, they taste slightly sweet. It tastes like you’ve added some kind of syrup or flavoring, but it’s not. It’s so cool to elevate (another word—I unironically despise the word “elevate” with regard food) the morning coffee with just a few little steps that make it a little delight.