Easy Gourmet Recipes for Coffee Lovers

Most of us love coffee as a beverage, which is often used as a way to stay awake in the daytime, but how about using coffee to flavor our food? For example you could use your coffee maker to prepare your main dish.

What comes to mind are desserts or chocolate, where coffee is most commonly used in food. But we will come back to this. How about getting away from the sweet dishes for the moment. Let’s try and be a bit more imaginative. Coffee can be used to improve the glazing of meats on the barbeque, to enhance that chili or to spice up a casserole.

To spice your food, do yourself a favour and don't resort to instant coffee. Only freshly ground coffee will give you the optimal flavor.
Put your coffee grinder to work just before you need the coffee. This way the aromas don't diminish. Use freshly filtered water and double the amount of coffee making it quite strong.

The first idea is one for a savoury sauce for a meatloaf dish. Take one tablespoon full of coffee and add a little bit of cold water, ketchup, Worcester sauce. Mix in dry red wine to taste, vinegar, a spoon full of lemon juice, Demerara sugar completes the delicious mixture.

Cook the meat at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for about 30 minutes, and add the well mixed sauce. Then let the meat cook for a further 45 minutes.

How about some espresso brownies for a delicious dessert?
This recipe is always very popular with my guests. For this you need to grind some dark roasted coffee. I always use an Italian or French roast. Then you put some sugar, a pinch of salt and some butter in a pan. Melt this concoction over a low heat. Add some vanilla, chopped up milk chocolate and the previously prepared coffee.

Stir this mixture and let it cool down a little bit. Use a spoon to stir in some eggs and flour into the batter before it gets cold. When smooth, put it into a baking tin and bake at moderate temperature for 30 minutes. Try to control yourself! Don't try the brownies before they are cold.

I could go on giving you recipes for cookies, cakes, gateaux even ice cream tastes great when flavored with coffee. Believe it or not but even the common sponge can be given some pep, iced or filled with coffee

Tiramisu is now popular all over the world, this fantastic creation made with savoiardi or finger biscuits dipped in espresso optionally having added Marsala liqueur, Amaretto or rum. These are then alternately layered with mascarpone cheese which has whipped cream and whipped egg-white stirred into it. The last layer should be the remainder of the Marsala mixture. Finish it all off by sprinkling cocoa over this delicious dessert.

Quite a few cocktails nowadays have coffee added to them.
The list of liqueurs containing coffee is getting longer everyday:
* Allen's Coffee Brandy
* Aruba Arehucas
* Vibe Robusta Coffee Liqueur
* Bols Coffee Liqueur
* Café Britt Coffee Liqueur
* The Evil Monk
* Kahlúa
* Kamora
* Keuck Türkisch Mokka
* Kona Gold
* Kosaken Kaffee
* Mokatika
* Sabroso
* Sheridan's
* Starbucks Coffee Liqueur
* Tia Maria
* Toussaint Coffee Liqueur
just to mention a few ingredients being used to enhance cocktails.

If you are not into alcohol, how about making a syrup spiced with coffee. For this you need some high quality coffee twice as strong as you would normally make it, boil this with a portion of sugar.
Boil to liquefy the sugar. then put the mixture over a low heat to evaporate most of the liquid.
Let the syrup cool down then use to put on top of vanilla ice cream or
pancake.

So you can see there are a lot ways you can use your coffee maker to compose some wonderful dishes using your imagination … Enjoy the creative results

Jeen van der Meer is the author of www.coffee-makers-review.com