Cozy Cinnamon Maple Latte

I ADORE Coffee! I adore it all year round. I adore the smell, the taste, the look and feel of coffee shops. I adore my own coffee maker & espresso machine at home. YEP…I adore all things COFFEE!!!  What I DON’T adore is bad coffee!!  [Insert Lorelai Gilmore drinking bad coffee at the Chilton parent meeting] — if ya know, ya KNOW! 😉

Fall is my absolute favorite time of the year!  I love everything about it!  The cooler temperatures…sweaters…cozy jammies…snuggles with my babies (who sadly are 26, 24, 19, & 10, but IF they ever allow a snuggle, I’m all there for it!)!  I love the colors of Fall!  I love the changing leaves!  I love campfires!  I love blankets and heating pads and all things fuzzy and soft!  And on TOP of all of that, there’s something about a hot cup of fru-fru coffee with foam on top that just COMPLETES the wonderful feelings that come with Fall.

I grew up in the rolling hills of Pennsylvania, and if ANY area has the best Fall season ever, it’s the Northeastern part of the US.  I absolutely LOVED the Fall seasons growing up there.  The rolling mountainous hills in the Fall had every crazy leaf color splattering an amazing painting of the most gorgeous and colorful landscape ever! I remember driving to grandma and grandpa’s farm in the Fall, and the drive was just so beautiful it’s hard to put into words!  Then we’d get to grandma and grandpa’s farm, and I’d remember the adults going into the house to cozy up and have meaningful conversations and of COURSE, grandma would always fix coffee and hot cocoa, but us kids…we had to do our adventuring first  We would explore the farm, taking turns riding the 3-wheeler buggy (like an ATV), then we’d climb trees and talk about all of our treehouse designs we’d love to build in them.  We’d go check on the cows, we’d scoop milk from the vat, we’d enjoy all we could in that beautiful Fall weather until it was too dark to do much else.

Then we’d bring our warm bodies (but cold noses) into the farmhouse and we’d sit and enjoy yummy treats, cuz grandma ALWAYS had some kind of wonderful goodness for us, and we were in heaven!  We’d play yahtzee with grandma, and it seemed she’d ALWAYS win! LOL  But I think it was her and grandpas favorite thing to do every evening, so she had a lot of practice!  But it sure was cozy sidling up to her at the breakfast bar and playing some games.  Then she’d go spend more time with the adults watching the news or having conversations, and us kids would play more games, or we’d play hide-n-seek, cuz she had the perfect large farmhouse for that, or we’d head up the smooth wooden stairs and bottom-bump our way down to the bottom, then back up again, and sliding down again…many times over!  Smooth wooden shiny stairs are the BEST stairs for ‘bottom-bumping’ down! We’d just wear ourselves out till the very last minute when bedtime was required!

I remember sleeping some of my best sleeps up in the huge chilly farmhouse bedrooms all snuggled up in grandma’s blankets!  The rooms were HUGE, and the beds were equally huge with tons of cedar chests full of as many blankets as we wanted!  And then….waking up to the smell of bacon!  Oh heavens, I can smell it now!  Grandma ALWAYS fixed us the most amazing breakfasts!  We never had bacon at home because my dad was convinced pork was super unhealthy, so when we could smell that bacon and enjoy chowing down on it at grandma’s, that just ADDED to the feeling of wonder!  After breakfast, we were back outside…exploring the barns, the grain bin, the fields, creating Nancy Drew mysteries and solving them, convincing ourselves that Native American Indians had been living in the woods and had caves and hideouts, and…heavens, there were SO MANY mysteries we created on that farm — it was AMAZING!

It was a DREAM to be at grandma and grandpa’s farm, and it ALWAYS included warm fuzzy jammies and warm yummy cocoa or coffee!  Every evening!  Sigh…what bliss that was, and as I’m writing this, I’m dreaming of being a kid again and heading to that farm!  It was truly a kids paradise!  But…ALL of that wondrous stuff just SINGS of Fall, and Fall ALWAYS has my ‘coffee’ senses heightened even more!  It’s just that COZY thing, ya know?  Do you feel me?

I love to BREATHE in deeply, give a good healthy sigh, and sip a wonderful sip of that foamy hot goodness (WHILE in my soft warm jammies, snuggled with a blanket, and maybe a fire if available)!  Sooo…all that being said, I recently got an espresso machine and literally, I now KNOW that one of God’s gifts to me in Heaven will be a never-ending supply of fabulous Columbian coffee beans and the most exquisite espresso machine pulling the most luxurious shots of espresso we will EVER experience here on earth! 😉  But until then, I have been LOVING my machine here on earth and I’ve been playing around with recipes!  I definitely have a few favorites, and recently this yummy Fall version has me ALL warm and fuzzy!  I’ve called it my ‘Cozy Cinnamon Maple Latte’!  Yep…that’s patented and everything! Ok…kidding, NOT patented, but everything warm and wonderful is in this Fall recipe and I want to share it with you.  It’s very simple but luxurious, and it’s more healthy with the maple syrup rather than conventional sugar, so extra ‘YAY’S’ for that too!

Ok…Here you go:

I hope you enjoy this goodness as much as I do! If you ADORE coffee like me, I have no doubt you’ll love this Fall Cozy hug in a mug! It’s delightful!

Tag me on Instagram if you try this recipe and love it – tag me @kelly_nickel