A Barista's Favorite Fall Ingredients To Jazz Up Homemade Coffee Creamer

Ever wonder what it takes to become the world's best barista? If anyone knows, it's Andrea Allen, the co-founder of Onyx Coffee Lab and the 2020 U.S. Barista champion and 2021 World Barista runner-up — and who better to ask for ways to jazz up your homemade coffee creamer this fall? Some of her recommendations include white chocolate, pistachio, and maple. Additionally, she mentioned, "There's also this great tea called Lapsang Souchang that is a smoked tea and is dried and has the flavor of a campfire. This could be something off the wall to try in a creamer." But how do you infuse flavors into your homemade coffee creamer?

Homemade creamer starts with mixing condensed or evaporated milk (or any dairy free variety) with your choice of milk. Then, you can add flavoring extracts or syrups to taste, or you can take the fresh ingredients (be it vanilla bean or Allen's suggested smokey Lapsang Souchang tea leaves), and steep them with the milk. Once cooled completely, all you need to do is strain and pour it into an airtight container. Most traditional flavored syrups and extracts, like chocolate, pistachio, and maple, can be purchased in store or online. If you want even more control over the flavor, you can make your syrups from scratch. Once you know how to make your own coffee creamer, you can recreate even more creative fall-flavored creamer recipes. They might even inspire you to get jazzy with your own ideas too.

Most things are a lot easier said than done, but making coffee creamer at home is not one of those things. It really is very simple. Still, there are ways that you can overcomplicate it — and there are a few homemade coffee creamer mistakes that you'll want to avoid. Seeing as coffee creamer is, essentially, extra-creamy, flavored milk, one of the most important things you need to get right is the type of milk you use.

While the ratio can be played around with depending on how thick you want it to be, it's important that you use a combination of sweetened condensed milk or evaporated milk, plus regular milk. Sticking with dairy will yield the most consistent results, but if you go for any dairy-free alternative, a full-fat or barista-style oat milk will be your best bet. You can even find sweetened condensed oat milk at most stores to mix it with.

Another important tip you need for making coffee creamer at home is to gently simmer it and give it enough time to cool completely before you strain it. The simmering process is what allows all of the jazzy fall flavors to meld together and any added sweeteners to totally dissolve into the liquid. The time spent cooling, in turn, allows those flavors to steep and reach their full peak, as opposed to putting it straight into the fridge.