We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.
Zhuzh-ing up your coffee at home isn’t much different than zhuzh-ing up anything else in your life — requiring something just the slightest bit different than what you might be used to. For that, look no further than a fragrant syrup in the flavor of cardamom. Paired with sugar, cardamom is one of the two ingredients you can use to give your coffee a Lebanese twist — and one of the many ingredients used in Turkish coffee. But, used in the form of a sweetened syrup, that twist is broken down into one. Beginning with the addition of one to two tablespoons, adjusted to taste, cardamom syrup brings all of your coffee drinks a zhuzh of warmth and citrus.
A bottle of 1883 cardamom syrup can be purchased on Amazon for as little as $18.95. But you can also make it yourself at home. Following Tasting Table recipe developer Susan Olayinka’s instructions for a no-heat, no-fuss simple syrup at home, you can infuse the mixture of 1 cup of sugar and 1 cup of water with a tablespoon of cardamom using a store-bought extract or dried, crushed seeds. Shaken together, your syrup will be ready to use within an hour — just be sure to strain it if you’re opting for cardamom seeds. You could also go the usual simple syrup route and boil sugar and water with your cardamom. The hardest part will be waiting for it to cool before you can enjoy it in your coffee.
Cardamom coffee in all sorts of ways
Once you have your cardamom syrup, you get to experiment with all the different ways you can enjoy it in your coffee. Aside from adding it directly to your coffee drinks, a fun way to infuse its citrusy, warm flavor in your recipes is to make cardamom cold foam. Substituted for the traditional simple syrup in Starbucks’ cold foam recipe — along with the option to use oat milk instead of regular milk — you can zhuzh up your cold foam as well as your coffee. Simply add a tablespoon of cardamom syrup to your blender along with the milk and watch it foam. With it, you can top all of your iced coffee drinks with a nice, velvety layer of frothed milk infused with the bright flavor of cardamom.
Even if you’re making cardamom cold foam, your cardamom coffee drinks hardly ever have to just be cardamom coffee drinks. Given the ingredient’s warm and earthy flavor, cardamom can be combined with a wide array of other flavors in your recipes, too. For instance, when added to Jessica Morone’s recipe for homemade blueberry simple syrup, you can take part in the summer coffee trend from home while making it your own. Other citrus-like flavors like orange and berry flavors such as strawberry could work well, along with warm notes of vanilla or caramel. To take things even deeper, consider pairing cardamom with chocolate or marrying it with miso in your fall coffee drinks.
