The best sugar-free iced coffee - fast & easy recipe

It's been so hot here in Finland this summer. Here. In. FINLAND. I mean: we live at the arctic circle; where the Santa Claus is from, if it's over 24°, it's tabloid news - that Finland. But it has been hot, 30° hot for about a month now, with no end in sight, and for someone who isn't used to it, it's been torture. All you southerners are probably laughing at me now.

Anyway, I didn't mean to complain, but to share this iced coffee recipe.

Now, I prefer my coffee hot, but it's been SO hot (did I mention that?), I just can't drink anything hot. 

Secondly, I don't actually like sugar (or any sweetener) in my coffee (just a bit of milk), but in this iced coffee a bit of sweetener makes it super yummy. 

I used erythritol (called karppisokeri in Finnish) which is a type of calorie-free sugar alcohol. It does not affect your blood sugar and doesn't cause tooth decay (yay!). It's granular like sugar, and technically you can use it in baking, and some people do, but I find it tastes funny that way. But it works great in drinks! If you are not sugar-free, you can of course replace it with regular sugar.

And thirdly, this recipe uses instant coffee. Yeah, super fancy. But it's easy and the coffee wont be bitter (which is very common with iced coffee). There are a lot of iced coffee recipes that require you to make cold brew first, but I drink iced coffee very rarely, and when I do, I want it straight away. And some recipes are like "just brew a pot of hot coffee and let it cool". Yuuuuuk. Everyone knows cold coffee is revolting.

The recipe is super simple. And fast. The secret is in the blending. Seriously, don't try to mix this by hand.

The best sugar-free iced coffee

2 dl milk (about 0,85 cups, Google tells me)
2 tsp instant coffee
1 tbls erythritol
ice

Measure everything except the ice in a bowl and use an immersion blender (or a regular blender!) to mix until everything is smooth and the milk frothy. 

Like so.

Pour into a cup, add ice and enjoy!

Mmmmmmmmmm.

NEEDLE FELT 1ST BIRTHDAY CAKE TOPPER

Story time: I don't like candles on a cake, or more specifically I don't like the blowing out of candles. It seems just an euphemism for covering the cake in fine film of snot and spit. Lovely.

So, when the Kiddo had her first birthday in, er... October... I went for something different, wait for it... I needle felted the topper. You didn't see that one coming.

.

All joking a side, I wanted something simple and went for a plain sea green "1". You could totally do this with a cookie cutter (like I did with these snowflakes), but I just free handed it. It took quite a while to get right, and I felted it very firmly, so it would stay straight, but once i was satisfied with it I just stuck a toothpick in there. No glue or anything, just pushed it in there. I'm very happy with it! I think it was nice and plain for an innocent one year old. And I can reuse it when she turns ten! Wah, my baby!

This is a blurry still from a video I took. It's all I got, sorry.

Her smash cake was made following this recipe from treats with a twist. I substituted butter for oil and added one tbs of maple syrup, and topped it with whipped cream. I tried it myself and it was quite tasty.

Quite a few people who were at the party asked for the recipes for the things I made and I don't think I followed through... So, if that's you I'm sorry and here they are (mostly in Finnish unfortunately, definitely worth Google translate though). Every one of these is something I will definitely make again! My husband is allergic to eggs, so these are eggless and could be made vegan/vegetarian.

Cream Cheese Filled Rolls from maijalinnea.
Peppermint Chocolate Poke Cake from urbaanivegenda.
Queen of Coffee Cakes from urbaanivegenda.
Cookie Dough Bars (in English) from life's simple measures.
Banoffee, except instead of bananas I used strawberries.

Kinder Pie

This pie is a huge hit at the moment, and I love Kinder eggs, so of course I had to make it.

It doesn’t actually contain any real Kinder chocolate, but the taste is spot on. So even if you can’t get your hands on Kinder eggs, you can make this pie!

It’s sooooo good! Definitely worth making.

I mixed together a few recipes, the cake batter from here and the filling from the comment section of this post.

KINDER PIE (eggless)

6dl flour

2dl sugar

3tl baking powder

6tl vanilla extract

4rkl cocoa powder

150g butter, melted

1 1/2dl water

2dl milk

Mix together the dry ingredients, add butter, vanilla extract, water and milk. Mix together. Pour in to a high edged baking tray. Bake for 15 min at 200 °C. Let it cool completely.

1 can of condensed milk

150g white chocolate

Put the condensed milk in a microwaveable bowl and heat for 5 minutes stirring every minute or so. Do not let it boil over! This is to thicken the milk up a bit. Melt the white chocolate and add in to the milk. Spread over the cake. Let it cool completely in the fridge.

130g milk chocolate

100g white chocolate

Melt the milk chocolate and and spread over the filling.

Melt the white chocolate and spread it on top. You can make fancy patterns or just swirl it about like I did.

Let it set and cut in to squares and serve!

Cookie dough bars

Jake’s parents came over for coffee on Saturday. I had decided to make blueberry quark pie, but then came over these cookie dough bars on Pinterest and just had to make them.

They were soooo good. By the time I thought of taking a picture they had been mostly devoured. I sent a few for Jake’s brothers and a few to friends and everyone raved about them. I’m pretty sure these go to the recipes I’ll be making over and over again.

Click here for the recipe. Instead of the peanut butter toping I just melted two chocolate bars, one milk and one white chocolate and made swirls.

Blueberry Quark Pie

Jake and I have been dating for three years today! Is three year dating anniversary a thing? I’ll spare you all the sappy talk, but I did make this blueberry quark pie (Jake’s favourite) to commemorate this occasion. Woohoo!

Blueberry Quark Pie

Crust

100g butter

3/4 dl sugar

1 egg

3 dl flour

Mix together butter and sugar. Add the egg and mix well. Add the flour and mix until smooth.

Grease the pie pan and pat the dough in.

Filling

500g quark

1 dl sugar

2 eggs

4 tsp vanilla sugar

Mix all ingredients together.

250g blueberries (frozen or fresh) + some sugar to taste

Spread the blueberries evenly on top of the crust. Pour the filling on top. Bake for about 30 minutes in 200° Celsius. Sappy writing with leftover dough optional.

Italian Apple Cobbler

I have no idea if this actually has anything to do with Italy, but that’s what the recipe called it. What I do know is that this is the easiest, the very best apple pie I’ve ever eaten. It’s soooo good. The recipe I’ve linked to is in Finnish and I don’t know if I’m allowed to post a translation on my blog, if you want it just send me an email.

I made this last night and asked Jake if he’d like some? His reply: only if he could have a piece that had neither apples nor almonds. Well then. I’ll just eat this all by myself.

Super good with some vanilla ice cream. And coffee.

Side note: speaking of ice cream, in American movies they always eat it out of a jar type of container, I think it’s called a pint? Straight out of it with a spoon mostly too, which to me seems very unhygienic, sort of like drinking milk straight out of the carton. Over here ice cream mostly comes in square shape and you cut pieces with a knife. Just thought I’d share that!