The best sugar-free iced coffee - fast & easy recipe

It's been so hot here in Finland this summer. Here. In. FINLAND. I mean: we live at the arctic circle; where the Santa Claus is from, if it's over 24°, it's tabloid news - that Finland. But it has been hot, 30° hot for about a month now, with no end in sight, and for someone who isn't used to it, it's been torture. All you southerners are probably laughing at me now.

Anyway, I didn't mean to complain, but to share this iced coffee recipe.

Now, I prefer my coffee hot, but it's been SO hot (did I mention that?), I just can't drink anything hot. 

Secondly, I don't actually like sugar (or any sweetener) in my coffee (just a bit of milk), but in this iced coffee a bit of sweetener makes it super yummy. 

I used erythritol (called karppisokeri in Finnish) which is a type of calorie-free sugar alcohol. It does not affect your blood sugar and doesn't cause tooth decay (yay!). It's granular like sugar, and technically you can use it in baking, and some people do, but I find it tastes funny that way. But it works great in drinks! If you are not sugar-free, you can of course replace it with regular sugar.

And thirdly, this recipe uses instant coffee. Yeah, super fancy. But it's easy and the coffee wont be bitter (which is very common with iced coffee). There are a lot of iced coffee recipes that require you to make cold brew first, but I drink iced coffee very rarely, and when I do, I want it straight away. And some recipes are like "just brew a pot of hot coffee and let it cool". Yuuuuuk. Everyone knows cold coffee is revolting.

The recipe is super simple. And fast. The secret is in the blending. Seriously, don't try to mix this by hand.

The best sugar-free iced coffee

2 dl milk (about 0,85 cups, Google tells me)
2 tsp instant coffee
1 tbls erythritol
ice

Measure everything except the ice in a bowl and use an immersion blender (or a regular blender!) to mix until everything is smooth and the milk frothy. 

Like so.

Pour into a cup, add ice and enjoy!

Mmmmmmmmmm.

Hand-made felt play sandwich

After lamenting in the last post about having no crafts to post, I realized I DO have something I crafted... about three years ago!

When I was pregnant with the Kiddo I got really into making these felt play foods for her. I don't know why. I just got into my head that these were the thing to make and I managed to make quite a few, before my interest waned again.

I started by following this sandwich tutorial by myrtle & eunice  (the bread, the salad, the cheese) then went of on a tangent with all kinds of things.

I made some apple slices, eggs, (boiled and fried), bacon, peas, avocado, tomatoes and even some tea bags. Then I was done.

I just pulled them out for the Kiddo to play with, and they've been a hit! She just loves piling them all in the bowl and pretending to eat and then dumping them all on the floor again. They do make a huge mess.

If you are interested making your own, check out that sandwich tutorial and I've also collected quite a bit of play food inspiration on my Play Food Pinterest board (some felt, some crochet). I've also got a few amigurumi play food patterns here on the blog: beetroot, onigiri, mushrooms, chocolate chip cookie, Bertie Bott's every flavor beans, eggs and licorice allsorts.