Even More Fancy Drinks You Can Make At Home With Instant Coffee

Are Starbucks drive-thrus technically still open? Yes. Are we still going to use the next month of lockdown as an excuse to concoct bonkers caffeinated beverages at home? Absolutely. While the dalgona coffee trend has swept both TikTok and our hearts, the Instagrammable dessert drink isn't the sole wonder to be made with instant coffee. The British tabloid Metro ran a list of instant coffee recipes that'll have you spelling your own name wrong in minutes. Coffee purists, avert your eyes and refrain from comment.

Metro's list includes a Greek frappe, an iced latte, a shaken cappuccino, chilled Nutella coffee, a spiced latte, an Indian cappuccino, and instant coffee cold brew. Most of them can be made with some combination of instant coffee, water, sugar, and milk; the Nutella drink calls for its namesake hazelnut spread and vanilla extract, and the spiced coffee for nutmeg and cinnamon. As for the frappe and the cappuccino, Metro makes the excellent point that frothy milk can be achieved with a little bit of elbow grease. (Or a lot of elbow grease, depending on how hard your biceps are taking your gym closure.) The article recommends, in lieu of an at-home frother, using a cocktail shaker or a clean jar with a lid. Brilliant.

But for the most part, each of these recipes are simply different ways of preparing the same basic ingredients. Sure, certain extra ingredients would spruce up the drinks—evaporated milk would make the Greek frappe more authentic, for example. But is that alone worth a trip to your impossible-to-stay-socially-distance grocery store? Probably not.

Do you have any genius instant coffee creations we can make at home? Please, we're begging you, post them in the comments.