Why Your Coffee Creamer Is Coming Out Of The Bottle Like Slime
If you take it in your coffee, coffee creamer can make or break your cup of morning Joe. While the Coffee Mate Orange Cream Pop flavor is surprisingly decent, you can also dress up your café au lait with some Starbucks-inspired creamers, but really, there are so many different flavors to try. It's hard to pass up the convenience of store-bought, but an interesting phenomenon might have you reaching for the ingredients to make your own at home.
As seen on TikTok, user @ellabellabobellafofella recounts her harrowing experience with International Delight's Hazelnut flavor (video below). "I normally don't make hot coffee," she explains, while brandishing the offending container, "but the weather is getting colder, I was feeling a little frisky this morning, I bought this specifically to make hot coffee." She also lists off the expiration date as March 2025, so the creamer in the video, which was posted November 18, 2024, is months from expiring.
@ellabellabobellafofella
She then proceeds to pour out the creamer, and reveal its deplorably slime-like texture. It truly comes out of the bottle like Nickelodeon's Gak reborn (lookin' at you, 90s kids). The reason this has happened is ultimately unclear, but one authoritative commenter says it is likely due to temperature fluctuations either in transit or while it was on the shelf at the store.
Temperature fluctuations could create that?
That same commenter, later in the thread, reminds everyone that creamer isn't really made out of cream; in fact, it's not made out of any dairy products at all. Instead, it's a bit of a Franken-food, super-processed and consisting typically of corn syrup, oils, carrageenan, and artificial flavors and colors. The emulsifiers added to it could possibly, in their words, "solidify and become gummy" when exposed to extreme temperature variations, but that was just their educated guess. International Delight issued a statement, insisting that the creamer is not unsafe, but to contact the company directly with any quality issue.
To try and avoid your creamer turning to slime — or just plain spoiling — when in your own kitchen, you should never stash it in the door, and instead keep it on a refrigerator shelf. While keeping it on the door does make sense for convenience, it nonetheless exposes the creamer to the greatest fluctuations in temperature every time you open the fridge. Storing it on the bottom shelf and even near the back, where it's coldest, can help ensure your creamer stays freshest, and slimy texture-free, longest.