Mocha Frappé is the long-time favorite McDonald’s drink that is made mostly of milk, sugar, cocoa and coffee extract. Additionally, it is topped with a genereous serving of whipped cream. In the original maker’s own words, its taste can be described as “rich chocolate flavor and a hint of coffee.”
Apart from McDonald’s, Mocha Frappé can be made to taste delicious at home as well. Below we share a recipe that frequently brightens our days. Especially on rainy Mondays. Be warned, we added a little extra kick to it in the form of an actual expresso shot. Long live proper coffee!
How to make the best Mocha Frappé
To make this delicious treat at home, you will need a few key ingredients. No need to worry though, you should be able to get all of them in your local grocery store. The important thing is to make sure you use good quality coffee, which we believe is safe to assume if you are reading this post in the first place.
Ingredients
You want to have the below items ready as you start making this amazing beverage. However, don’t worry if you don’t have whipped cream or an espresso machine. There are plenty of possible substitutes you can use and still enjoy an incredible Mocha Frappé at home. For now, simply carry on, we will come back to these a bit later.
The basic ingredients include the following:
- Milk (ideally whole), 4 tablespoons
- Ice, 3 cubes
- Espresso shot, 40ml
- Cocoa, 1 teaspoon
- Sugar, 2 teaspoons
- Whipped cream, 2 tablespoons
Process
You can follow the below preparation process to make it super easy for yourself, but feel free to change it up as needed.
- Pour the espresso and milk into a blender along with the ice cubes and blend until smooth and foamy
- Add the cocoa and sugar and repeat
- Taste it and add more sugar as (and if) needed
- Top it up with some whipped cream
And here it is!
As a side note, if you don’t have a blender, just use something to manually crush the ice and then use a whisk to mix it all together.
How to make a healthy Mocha Frappé
The above recipe is no doubt delicious, but not always the healthies option out there. If you appreciate tasty drinks such as smoothies or milkshakes but need to keep an eye out on the amount of sugars or fats you consume, there are quite a few alternatives available.
First of all, see if you can substitute the above ingredients for something like the items below:
- Unsweetened cocoa powder (vs. regular sweetened version)
- Honey (vs. sugar)
- Skim milk (vs. whole milk)
If you have any of these at home, see if you can use them as substitutes in place of the original ingredients. Either way, the results will not dispappoint you.
Cool Mocha Frappé variations
Oftentimes, we feel like we’re here for a good time, not a long time. And with that in mind, we would like to present you with a few ideas that can help you tune your Mocha Frappé up.
Nutella
Yes, we know. For this one, you can use the original ingredients and simply substitute cocoa and sugar for Nutella. We recommend between 4-6 tablespoons. That’s it, short and sweet.
Cold brew
We took this one from a giant in the coffee world: Peet’s Coffee. Cold brew is generally characteristic of a very rich taste. Adding it to your Mocha Frappé will highlight the coffee in the beverage and will increase the overall volume of your drink.
This is because you will need to add a bit more than the original espresso shot (40 ml). See if you can add at least half a cup, ideally a whole cup (200-250 ml). And if you’re feeling funky, sprinkle some cinammon on top of the whipped cream.
Baileys
Last but but not least, you could add an additional 1/2 cup of Baileys, the well-known Irish cream liqueur. The recipe comes directly from the manufacturer and it is our second favorite one, right after the orginal mentioned above.
Missing ingredients
If you don’t have all the ingredients at home, remember that some of them can be easily substituted. Still, if you are really into Mocha Frappé but don’t feel like preparing it (and cleaning up afterwards), you can get pre-made powder mixes.
Apart from what you can find in the refrigerated section of your favorite grocery store, there are premium mixed such as the one by Sweetbird or Arkadia. These can not only help you save some time, but will likely contain higher quality ingredients than what most of us would normally buy during grocery shopping.
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