Coffee! Do stupid things faster with more energy.

Being the firstborn in my family, unforchantly meant I came along well before my parents decided to start eating more health conscious and sadly this means I learned some pretty bad eating habits early on in life, with my weight topping at about 255lbs when I was 24 years old should be proof of that. I had a rough time until till recently trying to lose all that weight, only to gain it back in a short time period. At one time I was down to 195 lbs and did it ever feel amazing. Anyways, I’ve settled with watching my weight more closely and I’m at least content knowing I’m about 30 lbs down from my original weight of 255 lbs and I have a long way to go of achieving my weight goal within the next couple years. To make matters worse, it’s going very “SLOWLY” which only adds to my frustration but my weight lose story is for another day and another post.

Point is, one sinful indulgence I have is my love to drink “fancy” coffee, I love the idea of flavored coffee and how it can challenge my tastebuds. For sometime now, my absolute favorite syrup has to be caramel and still is but recently I’ve come to loving Butter Pecan as probably my second choice. Considering that I’ve been trying to eat healthier, it can guilt me to drink a large Dunkin’ Donuts coffee knowing all the extra junk they (or any national coffee chain) adds to their syrups. Interestingly my wife found a love for coffee as I exposed her to it on our first date back in January of 2014. Knowing that we intend to teach our kids healthier eating habits then what we were raised on, I decided to make my own Butter Pecan recipe. From what I could find online, Caramel is technically scorched milk while butter pecan is scorched butter/cream. I know my recipe is technically far from perfect but it’s preservative free and less sugar since I substituted part of the sugar with Stevia in the Raw. Sidenote, do know that I had no source of pecan flavoring when I invented this recipe, so I made the recipe without it but if I’m not mistaking you should only need to add a tiny bit of natural pecan extract. I fully intend to update this post if and when I make alterations.

12oz (1.5 Sticks) Butter
1 cup Raw Sugar
1 cup Brown Sugar
1 cup Stevia In The Raw (For Baking)
1 tbls of Vanilla Extract
4 cups of Whole Milk

Melt your butter in a pot over medium heat

You will need to continuously and thoroughly stir, only taking momentary pauses every few seconds to check the color.

As you stir, the butter will begin foaming, the butter will not be ready until it begins to look like the right half of the picture. This browning on top means the butter has began to scorch. This process for me took about 5-7 minutes in total.

Next you will add both the raw sugar and brown sugar, again you will need to stir continuously.

You should know this process is complete once the sugar begins to clump and the butter fat separates. This took about another 3-4 minutes.

Add the vanilla extract and then slowly add the first cup of milk. Doing this too quickly could result in clumping.

Continually stir until sugar, butter fat and milk become well combined. Add the remaining milk and stir well until mixture returns to a boil.

Add the Stevia in the Raw and stir in well. If your not interested in the “33% less sugar” aspect this step benefits you, you could just add an extra cup of raw sugar but be sure it dissolve properly.

And this is the finished syrup, remove from heat and let cool for up to an hour. I put mine into a used Dunkin’ Donuts syrup pump but you could use any squeeze bottle. So far, I’ve left mine out on the counter for about two weeks before it began to crystallize and harden but I would suspect it would last a bit longer in the fridge. I don’t have much of a serving estimate but one batch has given me maybe close to hundred pumps. Mathematically, it should be around 136 tablespoons.

Enjoy your homemade butter pecan… well without pecan flavoring… for now.

Sorry. 🙁