Cookie Crumble Frappe [vegan]

 

Oh, hello there, you gorgeous drinkable confection. Let me introduce you to my friends, Oreo cookies.

   Well, almost Oreo cookies. The cookies, like the drink, are really a one-off of someone else's brilliance (aren't we all), brilliance in this case being Starbucks' Mocha Cookie Crumble Frappuccino.

    I've been big on the frappe /cookie combo almost since I first began visiting coffee shops, the establishment that introduced me to them being Broad River Coffee Company in Boiling Springs, North Carolina (I would add a nice little link here but I can’t because they recently switched hands are now Broad River Coffee & Cone and what is with that??). I have a quaint memory of my mom and I stopping to get frappe from Broad River on a special mother-daughter outing together, probably for my birthday or getting good test scores or my period, or something equally momentous and coffee-worthy. Broad River had a short menu of add-ins for their frappes: M&Ms, Heath bar, Snickers (mom's go-to), et cetera; but that was the day I tried Oreo, and it was, as evidenced by my writing it here, very memorable.

     We got the biggest sizes they offered that day and then went next-door together to walk through the town cemetery and read headstones and the history written between the names and the dates of the people buried there: the numerous “baby” So-and-So’s—Baby Hamrick’s and McSwain’s and Jolley’s and Webb’s—1820, 1960, 1901—taking a look just to leave again, some in the company of their mothers, and all the wives who outpaced their husbands, and the spouse who outlived their first marriage to face the awkward obligation of being buried between two partners, and all the five young sons (and only children) of one particularly unlucky couple who left home whistling ‘Dixie’ and managed to make their way back in wooden boxes between the years 1860-1865—I always thought five brothers must be used to sharing things, maybe it was right that they share a headstone, if they were all resting underneath it at all.

I just discovered this. It's amazing: no more buying coconut milk just for the cream.
Of course, now I have an entire can to dispose of . . . 

    I got sick in the cemetery. My mom asked if it was all the graves and headstones and suggested we go back to the car, but it wasn’t that at all, hadn’t even occurred to me that what we were doing could be considered morbid, though it was certainly a formative experience as pertaining to the realization of my own inevitable six foot drop; but I’m just a sick bastard that way. No, it was because of that delicious, sweet, frosty, cookie-and-caffeine laced frappe. It was just too rich and I had drunk it too fast.

    All right: recipe intro? Check. Charming childhood memory? Check. Morbid, irrelevant reflection upon death? Check. Just a typical blog post. Moving right along.

    So, those of you who frequent Starbucks or the mall or anyplace that is not a cave have probably heard about the summer Mocha Cookie Crumble Frappuccino. If you are in fact in a cave at the moment, the name  and preceding narrative is pretty self-explanatory so figure it out. So, cookie and mocha is delicious, the Broad River Coffee Co. is defunct and their frappe's a thing of the past and Starbucks probably makes a better version any way, but in order to obtain one, I would need to 1) drive to a Starbucks, 2) spend money, and 3), talk to a person. I hate doing all those things, and when you add them together, it’s pretty much out of the question.

That's how this happened.

Cookie Crumble Frappe [vegan]

2 tbsp cocoa powder

4 Oreo or sorta-Oreo cookies*

2 shots of espresso**

1/3 cup almond milk

½-1 cup ice (this depends on your blender, ice maker, etc; start with ¼ - ½ cup and add in as needed)

1 tsp Stevia + drizzle of honey or other sweetener***

Dash salt

1 tsp vanilla

Add everything except cookies to blender and blend until smooth, adjusting ice and liquid as needed. Add 3 cookies and pulse until they are still visible but preferably drinkable through a straw (admittedly, I overblended mine). Chop your last cookie for topping. Crown the frappe with some coconut whip and sprinkled cookie bits. It would be nice to add a little cocoa powder to the whip like the Starbucks original, which is what I intended to do. Until I ran out of cocoa powder. So.

                                                             

*You should not be a miser like me an just get legitimate Oreo's people, it's worth it and it's better and I've learnt my lesson so you don't have to.

**If you don’t have espresso, I would suggest substituting ½ a cup of strong coffee + 2 tbsp light coconut milk, the kind from a can, instead of espresso and almond milk. The coconut milk is heavier than almond, more like creamer, achieving the correct balance of milkiness without volume or dilution. I haven’t tried it for this recipe, that’s just the approximate formula I usually use in those lean espresso-less times.

***Yes, I used stevia and honey like a hippie. If you don’t have or like these things, I suggest shooting for 1-3 tbsp of sugar, depending on how sweet you like it. My recipe is for a drink on the sweeter side.