What to drink before the parade: Le Roi Cafe`

 

What to do:

I make my whipped cream in advance so I can keep in the fridge for a day or so beforehand (hence the gelatin).Otherwise, you end up with a sloppy, wilted mess instead of lovely, fluffy whipped cream.

Here's what you do:

First, take 1/4 cup of cold water in a small saucepan and sprinkle in your gelatin. Let it soak up water for about a minute, and THEN turn on low heat and stir it until it dissolves (it looks like a simple syrup at this point).

Take it off the heat, and mix your 2 Tablespoons of powdered sugar with your cold heavy whipping cream until you have stiffish peaks. (I use my trusty handheld emulsion blender here...did you get one, yet?) Mix in the gelatin/water mixture and blend again until you get softer peaks. You can store this for a couple of days in an air-tight container, which is AWESOME for when you're having company AND when you just want a spoonful of the most heavenly stuff ever on a Tuesday afternoon. ;)

Brew your coffee. I went with like 3 tablespoons of coffee/cup of water, which is WAY stronger than I usually make it. Also, for the hard version of this drink I used Community Dark Roast coffee (we ALWAYS buy community coffee down here... #drinklocal) for a super robust flavor.  If you're making the virgin version, I'd go easy on the King Cake flavored coffee (1 tablespoon of coffee/cup of water) as it has a VERY strong vanilla flavor. I also mixed it with some dark roast to cut the sweetness).

 

While your coffee is brewing, make your colorful sugars, (or you can be smart and do this in advance, also). In each plastic zippered bag, put 1/3 cup sugar. In one bag, put in yellow food coloring, in another, mix in green, or if you don't have green, make it with about 2 drops of Blue + 2 or 3 drops of yellow.

In the third bag, make purple sugar using 2 or 3 drops of red and 2 or 3 drops of blue.

Mix the colors and the sugar together by smushing the bag with your fingers and moving the sugars and dye together. SO EASY! Now, if you find the sugar colors are too dark, or "too red" or "too blue" You can add in more sugar (to lighten it) or more of the opposite color. Put these aside or store until you're ready to use them.

You can decorate your drink in one of two ways... 1) you can sprinkle a touch of each color sugar on the top of the whipped cream. Either way is great and both turned out pretty in my book, but I think I'm a "sprinkle on top kind of girl." Just FYI, In these photos, the sprinkled mugs are the alcoholic drink, and the rimmed glasses are just coffee and whipped cream.

OR 2) You can rim your glass in sugar (which crystallizes really well when the hot coffee hits the glass mug!) rim your glasses with a touch of milk and sprinkle the sugar on a piece of wax or parchment paper. press the wet rim into the sugars and voila!