Despite my lack of blogging lately, I’ve been doing lots of fun, fermenty things. One of my recent favorites things was my trip to New York to teach a vegetable kvass workshop to the good members of NYC Ferments.
It was inspiring to see such a large, active community of fermenters and I really hope we have something similar in Philly someday. It was really a great time, loads of fun.
One surprising highlight of my couple days in New York was an impromptu trip into a little, nearly subterranean cafe near Jimmy’s No. 43 (the spot where NYC Ferments has their meetups.)
I popped down there for tea and water, but I saw a special item that included kefir and I had to try it. It was frothy, flavorful and thirst-quenching. I’m normally a plain milk kefir lady, and I don’t add a lot of sugar (in the form of maple syrup or anything else) to the food and drink I make, so I drank it and really enjoyed it, but didn’t really consider At the time I didn’t know I’d be dreaming about it for days afterwards, so sadly, I didn’t keep track of the name of the place. I tried googling “tiny east village cafe,” “downstairs tea coffee new york,” “cinnamon kefir drink nyc” and more, all to no avail.
I was, however, fully able to recreate the drink from my fond memories, and it now brings me and my loving spouse quite a bit of probiotic joy!
Maple Cinnamon Milk Kefir Drink Recipe
The frothiness is a key part of the delight of this recipe, so don’t skimp on the blending! There’s a lot of variation in what’s produced by one set of kefir grains versus another, so depending on the sweetness or sourness of your kefir, you may want to add less or more maple syrup.