Healthy Chocolate Coffee Drinks

I was spending too much on expensive fancy coffee drinks so I decided I would invent my own. After many trials, I came up with some easy, quick ways to make a healthy iced coffee at home. The flavor is comparable to those Starbucks bottled frapps you can get at the grocery store, only this has vitamins and protein and junk, and it's less expensive.

Three ingredients, thirty seconds, under 200 calories

I was a Starbucks junkie. I was on a health kick, going to the gym 4x a week, eating Lean Cuisines for lunch and chicken and brown rice for dinner, but the one thing I couldn't shake was the Frappucino habit. Not only was it ruining my diet, it was costing me upwards of $80 per month.

Of course I tried to give it up, but unfortunately, I am a lazy jerk (this will become a recurring theme in this article). So I decided that I would have to get my fix some other way.

It had to be tasty. It had to be cheap. It had to be healthy--or at least, not unhealthy. And it had to be easy. Easier than driving to Starbucks. Something I could throw together in the morning before going to work.

The Coffee Part

Any moron can make coffee, but I didn't want hot coffee, I wanted iced coffee. You pour hot coffee over ice and now you have a luke-warm, watered down sludge. Gross.

Making coffee at night and then sticking it in the fridge works a lot better, plus you can make a bunch at a time (I have instructions on this below). Only problem is you have to remember to do that.

Powdered instant coffee is perfect for lazy jerks like me. Get the cheapest kind. Why? Because I've noticed that cheap, store-brand coffees can dissolve cleanly in a cold liquid. Fancy ones like the Starbucks Via don't work well because you need hot water to dissolve them.

The Chocolate Base

I wanted something rich and chocolately that tasted good cold. I tried everything. Chocolate Slim-Fast. Special K Protein shakes. Everything tasted weird, or didn't taste good over ice, or was ridiculously unhealthy. Chocolate milk--just plain old chocolate milk tasted good with it, but since I like to drink my drinks slowly, real dairy was out. So I tried chocolate silk.

Do not be afraid of Silk. I actually can't stand the taste of regular Silk, but the chocolate kind, with the coffee added to it, is perfect!

After messing around with the different varieties of Silk, I present to you, the best combination:

1/4 Very Vanilla Silk.

3/4 Light Chocolate Silk

2 tablespoons store brand instant coffee

It's good with just chocolate silk, but adding the vanilla makes it richer and oddly, more chocolately. Even cold, the HT instant coffee dissolves and will not be grainy with just a few stirs of the straw. I know not every grocery store will have the "Very Vanilla" kind, or "Light", but any combo of the chocolate and vanilla will taste good.

That's right, my recipe (probably) won't kill you and might even be healthy

If you make this 16oz (Grande size at Starbucks), this is how that recipe breaks down:

200 Cal (65 from the 4oz Very Vanilla, 135 from the 12oz Light Chocolate)

less than 5g fat

Vitamin A 25%

Vitamin C 17%

Calcium: 62%

Protein: 7.5g (about as much protein as an egg)

And no, I'm not a shill for Silk. I'm sure this would also be good with another kind of flavored soy milk, but Silk is the only kind available at my Harris Teeter.

If you're not a chocolate junkie like me, you can try this recipe:

1/2 cup ground coffee.

4 1/2 cup water

1/4 cup sugar, if you like sugar in your coffee.

Just let it sit in the fridge overnight, then strain through a fine strainer. Even if you let it sit a couple of days, it's still fine. This method takes some forsight, but is super-cheap (as cheap as the coffee beans you use) and requires almost no effort.

If you like blended coffee drinks like frappuchinos, you can get that same richness and texture with protein powder. You get a rich, creamy coffee drink only instead of fat and calories and junk you get lots of protein. It turns the drink into a mini-meal. However, you have to get the right powder.

Syntha-6 is consistently good in the flavor department. You can hit GNC for it but they almost never have the really good flavors like cookies n' cream.

I don't recommend using a full serving size unless you are actively working out. I use 1/2 scoop for a 16-oz drink, so you get 96 days of coffee drinks.

For a half-scoop of Syntha-6 cookies & Cream, with 16oz skim milk and a scoop of instant coffee, you get:

272 cal (172 from the milk)

4g fat, 1g sat fat

27g protein

Not a bad way to start the day!