Day 192 -- Green Tea Time -- The Recipe

So, now that I found a source for reasonably priced green tea powder, I had to figure out how to make it into something tasting like the Starbucks Green Tea Latte (grande iced with soy, no syrup).  But first, a shout-out to Nuts.com who had 8 oz. packages of matcha green tea powder for $19.00.  My purchase came in a cute little box with cartoons all over it.  AND, inside was sample pouch of their Power Mix, a tasty mix of dried fruit and nuts.

The major components of the Starbucks recipe is their green tea powder that also contains sugar.    Combined with the sugar in the vanilla soy milk they use AND their simple syrup, this makes a cloyingly sweet drink if you order it as is.  I've always order it without the syrup.  When they first offered the drink, they used melon syrup (honeydew, I think) instead of the simple syrup.  Actually, if you're using dairy milk, I would expect that the syrup might be necessary to sweeten it up a little bit, but with vanilla soy milk, it's not.

For my recipe, I started with 8 oz. of Silk Very Vanilla soy milk and 1.5 teaspoons of green tea powder.  The powder is notoriously difficult to mix, so I put ice and soy milk in a shaker and then sprinkled the tea over top and shook.  And . . . it tasted remarkably like a Starbucks Iced Green Tea Latte.  And, more importantly, at a more than reasonable price.  My 8 oz. of powder will make 36  8-ounce drinks which, with ice, is about the size of a 16 oz. grande at Starbucks.    So for about $1.00, I've made a drink that cost me $4.00 at Starbucks!  All I have to say to that is -- Yay!!!