Low Calorie Iced Cafe Mocha

ByJarin Satterlee

About 15 years ago I stopped drinking soda pop on the advice of a chiropractor. He recommended that I drink only water for 2 weeks. I did and you know what, it I really didn’t crave Coke anymore. That is because after the two weeks, I replaced Coke with Iced Cafe Mocha. I had at least one (usually more) each day. What I failed to realize, was just how much sugar is in that. Especially the premixed kind you can buy in bottles, cans or from a fountain type machine at a convenience store.

When I dropped added sugar a little over a year ago, I had a really tough time with missing my mocha. Now, the dirty little secret… I cheated. I had to allow myself to cheat, but I had to really pay attention to that cheating. I live as though I have cut out all added sugars, but realistically there is some added sugar that I have consumed. Mostly by way of iced mocha.

Cheating for me came in the form of Starbucks. Now, I justify this by modifying the order to include only 2 pumps of the chocolate syrup (vs the 6 pumps in the standard order) and having non-fat milk with no whipped cream. Still not great, but you have to live a little sometimes.

I went through many attempts to find an alternative, to the iced mocha I loved, that didn’t taste horrible. I tried various powders and non-milks (you know the kinds of milks that come from things without teats). I tried them in different quantities. I tried everything. The closest I came was using sugar free chocolate syrup and a chocolate milk product called Carbmaster.

That is until recently. Recently, I was at my local grocer looking for popsicle sticks to make a frozen yogurt bar (another recipe I may add if I can get it to work well enough). I couldn’t find any and thought maybe they will have some in the ice cream isle in one of those display cases they suction to the freezer doors. They didn’t 🙁 While there I noticed that among the ‘magic shell’ ice cream toppings there was something called mixes. I figured it would be another in the long list of failed to be my replacement mocha, but decided to buy a bottle.

This is the closest thing I have come to a Starbucks Iced Mocha yet. I hope you enjoy it!

The ingredients:

Directions:

  • Brew 3oz of espresso (or however many shots you like)
  • Mix in 5 – 6 squirts of the skinny mixes chocolate sauce to espresso (more or less to taste)
  • Pour espresso & sauce into a glass with ice
  • Add 8oz of the Carbmaster Skim Milk (adjust as you like)

Macros:

For the ingredients as listed above

  • Calories – 75
  • Protein – 11g
  • Fat – 0g
  • Carbs – 6g (3g total sugar, 0g added sugar, 0g fiber)