Coffee does NOT get me started in the morning. I’ve never developed a taste for it. I guess that puts me in a 1% club of sorts. For the first couple of years after Rescue Chocolate was founded, it seemed like the other 99% were contacting us and begging us to come out with a coffee-flavored chocolate bar.
We resisted as long as we could, but then finally succumbed. And I have to admit, our best-selling Forever Mocha bar is divine. In addition to coffee, it contains a wicked-good hazelnut praline. It is possible (for me) to wolf down two whole bars in the blink of an eye.
Which got me thinking… what other vegan products containing coffee might be worth a try?
When visiting relatives in the Midwest recently, I stumbled upon something called Coffee Cereal. My cousins claimed this stuff allowed them to be super-efficient in the morning. Instead of drinking a cup of coffee and eating a bowl of cereal, they could eliminate one step and just ingest coffee cereal! I tried it. It was a corn flakey-type product with a nice zing. Coffee Cereal is only available around Illinois, but the two physics students who founded the company have plans to expand.
Moving away from the breakfast hour, there are the lovely little VerMints breath-freshening capsules that come in a variety of flavors–including Café Express. These contain organic, fair-trade coffee and a touch of Vermont maple syrup. Truly yummy, any time of day.
But let’s get back to the most important component of any meal: dessert! It is wonderful to note that most of the self-service frozen yogurt places popping up around the country have a soy-yogurt option for their patrons. The Tutti Frutti stores actually have a decaf coffee bean topping with which to crown your soy-yogurt creation.
Another great topper or drink infuser is the coffee syrup from Torani. It can be stirred into smoothies and spritzed over all kinds of baked goods for a genuine Brazilian coffee bean punch.
Meanwhile, So Delicious Dairy Free offers a coffee soymilk ice cream whose title says it all: Mocha Almond Fudge. The almonds are crunchy and the fudge creates a luscious swirl throughout the creamy coffee-ness. Of course it doesn’t hurt that the product is certified organic, gluten-free, and non-GMO.
Coffee-flavored desserts abound at my local vegan cupcakeries and donut shops. Here in Brooklyn, we are blessed to have Dunwell Donuts at our fingertips. Amongst their whopping 75 flavors, they serve up the Espresso Mocha donut which is to die for. In towns where there are not such civilized businesses, regular bakeries might do a single vegan flavor of the week incorporating coffee, if they are asked nicely.
And if you’ve had enough coffee-inflected food for awhile, how about considering some coffee beauty products? Lavami makes a body scrub utilizing finely ground coffee beans, coconut, raw sugar, coffee butter, almond oil and cinnamon and vanilla essential oils. I think the coffee is included for its rich aroma, while the other ingredients are designed to hydrate and nourish your skin. Then there’s the Wake Up Bath & Body gift collection from Java & Co. You get body butter, body frosting, a body scrub, a lip balm, and a lip scrub… all sporting your choice of regular or decaf coffee. These companies have the coffee addicts covered, literally.
All this talk of coffee is making me too antsy to sit around the computer any longer. Coffee lovers, it’s time to sally forth and conquer the world.
