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Recipe · 調合

Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Brew

The café favorite, rebuilt with real vanilla and actual measurements.

The most-ordered cold brew drink in America is, structurally, three good ideas stacked: strong cold brew, lightly sweet vanilla syrup, and a cream layer that floats instead of mixing. Cafés get away with charging six dollars for it because the components are prepped ahead. So prep them ahead. Both keep for a week, and assembly takes forty seconds.

Component 1: real vanilla syrup

  • 100 g sugar
  • 100 g water
  • 1 vanilla bean, split and scraped (or 2 tsp real vanilla extract added off the heat)

Simmer sugar and water until dissolved — about 3 minutes. Off the heat, add the vanilla bean and seeds (or extract). Steep 30 minutes, strain into a jar, refrigerate. Yield ~160 ml; keeps 2 weeks. The bean version tastes noticeably rounder than extract; both embarrass the pump bottle at the café.

Component 2: the sweet cream

  • 80 ml heavy cream
  • 80 ml whole milk
  • 30 ml vanilla syrup (from above)

Stir together in a jar. Yield ~190 ml — about 4 drinks; keeps 5 days. For a thicker float that sits like a cloud, shake the jar hard for 10 seconds before each use, or froth 5 seconds with a milk frother. You want thickened-but-pourable, not whipped.

The build

  1. Fill a 16 oz glass with ice — one large cube plus a few standard, if you have both.
  2. Add 150 ml cold brew concentrate and 60 ml cold water. (Slightly stronger than a standard cut — the cream will soften it.)
  3. Add 10 ml vanilla syrup to the coffee and stir once.
  4. Float 45 ml of sweet cream by pouring it slowly over the back of a spoon held just above the surface.
  5. Serve unstirred. The first sips are cream-forward, the last are black coffee, and the middle is the reason people order this.

Float vs shake

Floating gives the layered drink and the shifting sip. Shaking everything with ice gives a uniform, milkshake-adjacent drink that some people (we respect them, distantly) prefer — if that's you, shake and skip the spoon theatrics. The measurements don't change.

One warning from experience: this recipe makes grocery-store vanilla creamers taste like scented candles. There's no way back.