coffee break

Happy Valentine’s Day lovers, cat ladies, besties, and everyone in between! If you’re in Canada right now you’re probably so cold that you refuse to leave your bed… whether you have a Valentine this year or not! But don’t worry, we’re here to save your date night/girl’s night/dog walk plans. Give yourself and your heart a jumpstart with our Coconut Coffee Love Potion!

As you know, we’re very much on team tea here at The Pastel Palace, but post-vacation blues and the desolate cold have driven us to the dark side this past week. All dressed up with steamed vanilla coconut milk, a shot of vanilla liqueur, coconut whipped cream and a few puffs of coconut cotton candy, we guarantee this sugary concoction work faster than Cupid’s arrow ever could!

Note: product most effective when served in one of Ban.do’s adorable mugs!

Scroll down for Recipe

Ingredients //

6 T Coarse ground coffee
1 cup Vanilla coconut milk
2 oz Galliano vanilla liqueur
Whipped Cream
Organic Cotton Candy (we used the Coconut from Fancy Pufs)
Conversation hearts for garnish

Makes 2 12oz mugs

Recipe //

In a french press combine the coarse ground coffee with 2 cups boiling water. Steep! Fill the mugs up halfway, leaving room for milk.

Add cotton candy to sweeten, we used approximately a handful. Next add 1 oz of Galliano vanilla liqueur.

Steam vanilla coconut milk and top off your coffee. If you don’t have a steamer just heat it in a saucepan and foam with a handheld milk frother.

Finish with whipped cream (we used a coconut whip), a generous puff of cotton candy and conversation hearts of course!

It’s funny how much everything can change in such a short amount of time. It’s so easy to get sucked into a routine, a step-by-step blueprint for the way each day plays out that at times feels impossible to overcome even if it’s not making you all that happy.

I worked a 9-5 for nearly a year, and though I learned a lot, in retrospect I am not the type of person who should ever be working in an office like that. I dreaded getting up in the morning, let the things that mattered to me most slip, and some days I was so miserable and awful to be around that I barely recognized myself anymore. In the end, my only sanctuary was my lunch break each day.

I know everyone says this, but I really truly love food, and in the final weeks of my office job nothing seemed to matter quite as much as what I’d eat when noon rolled around. I started using Ritual as a way to peruse the local options while I was waiting for my break, and to maximize the spare time I had when I was able to leave for lunch. From indulgences at Little Nicky’s and Burger’s Priest to healthy bowls at Fresh, Ritual served as a sort of life raft in my day, and honestly it gave me something to look forward to. Whether I was using it to pre-order a coffee on the trip in, or for an afternoon snack, this app really helped me get through, and I daresay it’s one of my favourite app discoveries ever.

This post was sponsored, but all opinions are my own. To inquire about sponsored posts, please email jess@shineinfluencers.com