5 Must-Try Homemade Coffee Creamers (Pumpkin Spice, Apple Chai, & More) | Allrecipes

Fall is in the air and so are the festive, fun, overpriced drinks from your coffee shop. The secret to those coffee drinks are generally the creamers. I've got five fun, festive, fall creamers that you can make at home. Mm. Frank Maple Glazed Donut. Caramel Apple Crisp Creamer. A very subtle slice of pumpkin pie. Apple Chai Creamer. Cinnamon Brown Sugar. It's just the one for me. Have you ever stopped to check the ingredients on the coffee creamer bottles? Micellar, casein, monoundiglycerides, potassium phosphate, cellulose gel, carrageenan. Why? Creamer should just be like milk and cream and a little bit of sugar, right? That's what we're gonna do. First one I'm gonna show you is fall's most popular coffee creamer, Pumpkin Spice Creamer. Everyone wants to know how to make it. No need to buy it at the store. You have most everything at home. I'm going to start by making just the basic creamer. Do you know that creamer, really, forget all that stuff, is only two ingredients. We're talking milk or cream and sugar. The way to get the best is to use sweetened condensed milk. This is how it's like a little bit thicker than just plain milk. Mm, mm. I'm gonna try not to do that all day. Lick the spoon. And then I'm going half and half. I love half and half in my coffee. This is more of my everyday thing. And then just give it a good mix, and then you just keep this stored in your fridge, and you've got your homemade coffee creamer with two ingredients. Sounds a lot better than mono and diglycerides. What are those anyway? Okay, so now I'm gonna make our five and then taste all five. So now you have your base, and for this one we're just gonna add to it. I am adding in just a little bit of pumpkin to really give it that pumpkin pie spice flavor. It's already sweet, so I'm only adding like half the amount of maple syrup. And then the recipe calls for pumpkin spice, pumpkin pie spice. I don't know if you've been to the store lately, but the prices are a little ridiculous, and I bet you have everything in your pantry to make it, so you shouldn't really buy that anyway. It's usually cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves. And then I'm also just adding in a little vanilla extract. We're doing our holiday baking, you know, but in the form of creamer. And then we just shake it up. We don't want any chunks. We want this as smooth as possible. Mm, pumpkin spice creamer, done. On to the next. Next up, if this doesn't sound like fall, I don't know what does. Caramel apple crisp creamer. Yes, please. We're gonna have the warm, buttery flavor of caramel plus the crispness of apples. I'm starting with some apple cider. You could also just use apple juice here. And then I'm just gonna place this on the stove and let it be reducing down. Smells good. I'm also gonna add in a pinch of cinnamon. That's just gonna reduce down and make a apple-flavored syrup. And then we're still just gonna keep it super simple with our ingredients. Instead of sweetened condensed milk, we're using the dulce de leche, which is caramel-based milk. Okay, our apple cider reduction has reduced. It thickens on its own as it cools, but I'm gonna use it while it's hot to kind of soften up that dulce de leche. The smell right now smells like an apple crisp. It smells like it's been baking all day. And now, just like the other one, we'll whisk in our half-and-half. Again, you can use whatever milk you want at this point. What I love about this one is that you get that caramel color. You get the flavors of an apple crisp, caramel, and then it also looks like that. I feel like it also needs a little splash of vanilla. I'm gonna give her a taste. It's funny how that works. What I like about this versus something you might buy is that you can taste everything. It doesn't have that artificially fake apple flavor. You'll be able to pick that out. This is real. Cute, cute. Caramel apple crisp creamer, done. Nicole, what if we don't want dairy? What if we want an oat creamer? I got you. So we're gonna do apple chai oat creamer. For all you non-dairy people. First step to making the apple chai creamer is to make apple chai tea. So I'm going in first with a little bit of water, our apple cider, and then I'm throwing in 10 tea bags. And I just let it all come up together. So once we have our apple chai tea, we're gonna reduce it with a little bit of sugar and make it like a syrup, and then we'll stir it into our oat milk creamer. Okay, let's make our oat milk creamer. All right, oat milk creamer. I'm going to soak some oats in boiling water. Get some hot water, pour it over the oats, and let it sit for about 10 minutes or so. All right, once they have soaked, they've absorbed up all that liquid, and they're super soft. So we're gonna drain them and rinse them off. Okay, so now these oats just go straight into the blender. A lot of these oat milk recipes have oil in it, and one and a half cups of cold water. And then to sweeten this up, I'm going in with some dates. I like that dates also kind of thicken it up a little bit. And then that's it. I'm just going to... Now we're just gonna strain it, get out all the solids. Looky here. See how thick and creamy that is? That's good looking. Impressed myself with that one. Our tea is done. It is so fragrant in here. I've kind of let these sit 10 minutes steeping, and now I'm just gonna take them out. You get like a hint of that apple in the back. What? Hint. A hint, it is a hint. In with a cup of brown sugar. Then I'm gonna do a half a cup of white sugar. Mm, I see what you're doing there, Starbucks. Okay, so now I'm gonna bring this back to a simmer and let it reduce until it gets syrupy. Okay, our chai apple tea is super rich and concentrated, and that's what you want. So I'm gonna pull it off. It's gonna thicken even more as it cools. All right, we have our creamy oat milk creamer right here, our reduced apple chai tea, and then we're just gonna mix the two together. So you only need about like half to three quarters of the amount or however much flavor of that chai into your creamer that you want. That's the surprise hit of the day. I didn't think I was gonna like that as much as I do. That is delicious. Delicious. Three down, two to go. So here's a creamer without sweetened condensed milk. This is just about as natural as it gets. This is cinnamon brown sugar creamer. This is gonna be my favorite. This is gonna be my go-to. This is really like the way I wanna sweeten my coffee all the time. So going in mostly brown sugar, and then a little bit of white sugar, a little pinch of salt, and then some cinnamon. To that, I'm going in with a cup of heavy cream, and then we're just gonna cook that until all that sugar dissolves. And since we're cooking it all together, we're not gonna get all those big flecks of cinnamon. Although for this one, kind of like the pumpkin spice creamer, I'm okay seeing little flecks of cinnamon. I mean, you wanna tell the people there's cinnamon in here. Once all that is dissolved and is one uniform mixture, I'm just gonna take it off the heat and stir in our half and half, or milk. This is your rich and creamy delight. Did not mean to be that aggressive with that. All right, everything all mixed in. Smells delightful. And now I'm gonna stir in, I'm gonna go milk this time. That's the easy one of the day. We've had the surprise one, we've had the popular one. This is our easy one, also known as my favorite one. This would also make a really cute like little hostess gift, you know? Our own homemade creamer with no weird ingredients. Okay, one more to go. These are for you donut lovers out there. Maple glazed donut creamer. Okay, this is another really easy one, going just with the classic creamer mixture. And then we're adding in everything that it takes to bake a donut, except no yeast and flour required. For this one, I'm going a cup and a half of heavy cream and three quarter cup of milk. And with our sweetened condensed milk. All right, now to turn it into the maple glazed donut part, third cup of maple syrup. And then also a little vanilla, a little cinnamon, just a pinch. As that sweetened condensed milk gets mixed up into the liquid, it melts right into it, so it blends into a uniform thick mixture. For the surprise ingredient, it's just gonna kind of make it a little cozy, so I'm gonna take a little butter and melt it and whisk it in. Give it one little shake. Now, let's see. Think maple glazed donut. Nailed it, nailed it. Chilling, and now we're gonna serve up all five. Are we ready? Let's start with our pumpkin spice. Here's our pumpkin spice creamer and straight into our coffee. Right off the bat, tastes like a very subtle slice of pumpkin pie. It's not like you're eating pumpkin pie in your coffee, as are some of those creamers that have that artificial flavor. It's what you want. Caramel apple crisp, I'm calling the flavor of 2024, you know? You do, you get that little subtle apple, just a hint of spice. This is like my kind of like fall flavored creamer. It's like not too sweet, not too spicy. Perfect. Okay, let's do an iced coffee. Apple chai creamer. Now, this is our oat creamer, so it's not gonna be as creamy as the others. How is it? It's sophisticated. It's sophisticated and delightful at the same time. You taste all those spices in there, but the ice is quite delightful. That's delicious. Cinnamon brown sugar. We know this is gonna be a winner. It's just the one for me. Nothing not to like. It is so just creamy. You get the cinnamon, you get the warm brown sugar. Swear to God, I mean, what can I say? I'm just a simple girl. No comments. The maple glazed donut. We'll make this one for my donut loving daughter. You can smell the maple before you even take a sip. We nailed it. We nailed it with the maple glazed donut. Tastes like maple, but also tastes like a sweet treat. I guess the butter. This is good. We did it. Five fall, fun, festive creamers right at your fingertips. Which one is your favorite? You've gotta try at least one of these and let me know what you think. I looked on the Starbucks creamer and I found this creamer and none of them have any like pumpkin in it. Don't tell you like what, like I don't even say the word cinnamon. You know, you would think you'd at least see the word cinnamon, but what there is, is cellulose gel. Just saying.