Days 22 and 23 - dreams are made of salted caramel

Where do the days go? Apparently I am two days behind on my blogging, I'm so sorry! I was busy drinking delicious salted caramel coffee.

I'm not kidding. I love the stuff. It's what dreams are made of.

You know what I'm talking about, right? If you haven't had Starbucks salted caramel hot cocoa, please stop reading, get up, get in your car (or better yet, walk!) to the closest Starbucks and order yourself a tall salted caramel hot cocoa. With whipped cream. And maybe nonfat milk to compensate.

I say order yourself a tall, because just a tall has 230 calories and 7 grams of fat. Don't believe me? See here for yourself. But it's worth it, and no, I'm not being paid by Starbucks to say any of this.

I discovered salted caramel hot cocoa last year while I was on Kauai with Tyler and his family. I stopped in a Starbucks and ordered one up, and life as I know it has not been the same since. There's something about that creamy cocoa that pairs perfectly with warm, creamy caramel and thick grains of salt just resting on top of a pile of whipped cream. It makes all my days happy.

Though it is truly a dieter's nightmare. So I've tried different things to get my little salted caramel fix, without killing a fourth of my daily calorie intake in one drink.

I've realized that it's not so much the cocoa that I love, but what's on top of the cocoa - so let's go ahead and take the unnecessary cocoa out of the equation. I do enjoy coffee, so let's add that in. Light cool whip can be substituted for whipped cream, and we can use that low fat caramel apple dip that they sell in the produce section for the caramel sauce. And the salt? Shoot, I have that at home!

The end result? Not too bad! Also not quite the same. But all in all, a good substitute for when I'm trying to save on cash as well as on calories.

Cheers!