Cafe Miel Recipe

In Spain, it’s Cafe con Miel. In France, it’s Café Miel. Either way, “miel” (pronounced me-yell) means honey in both Spanish and French, and it’s the key ingredient in this indulgent coffee recipe. Café (con) Miel was traditionally prepared as an after-dinner drink, but I think you can break with tradition and enjoy this caffeinated beverage to get your day started too. If you've been using this article to make Café Miel already, I've included a jump to our original recipe in the table of contents.

Today, I’m showing you my take on Café Miel. I’ve got two methods of preparing it: one with filter coffee and another that I prepared using an espresso machine. It’s likely that you already have at least some of these ingredients at home, so you should be able to whip up this drink in no time. I stuck with using regular milk in my espresso version, but to make the traditional Café Miel even creamier, I subbed in heavy cream. Spicewise I prepared both versions with cinnamon and nutmeg, though you may have seen some recipes using cloves or cardamom. As you get comfortable, feel free to make your own additions based on your preferences.

In our original recipe we made our Café Miel with some vanilla extract, but I tried something new and infused my honey with vanilla beans. I’ll show you how to do that, but if you don’t feel like adding that step, I’ll also walk you through some other ways to keep the vanilla in there.

Café Miel

As with our original recipe, this updated version uses brewed coffee (or drip) as the base. My goal here was to elevate and modernize the recipe with a few more specialty-oriented modifications to enhance flavor and mouthfeel while honoring the essence of the original drink. I wanted to use a coffee brewer that does a good job of making small amounts of coffee, so I used a Fellow Aiden.

With the shower head set for the smaller semi-conical basket (the green dots), I used a recipe of 40g of medium-ground Beaned Up coffee to 680g of filtered water (a bit more than ½ liter). Unlike the original recipe, I wound up infusing vanilla beans into my honey to avoid the harsh, alcoholic taste that sometimes accompanies vanilla extract, and subbed out milk for heavy cream in order to thicken the drink and give it a bit more richness.

Recipe Details

• Complexity - Medium
• Serves - 3-4
• Prep Time - 5 Min
• Cost - ($)

Ingredients

• Freshly Brewed Drip Coffee - 16 fl oz / 473 ml
• Heavy Cream - 4 fl oz / 118 ml
• Infused Honey - 3 tbsp / 1.5 fl oz / 44 ml
• Cinnamon Stick
• Ground Nutmeg - 1 Dash

Equipment

• Medium Saucepan
• Whisk
• Liquid Measuring Cup
• Measuring Spoons / Shot Glass Pitcher

Step-by-Step Instructions

Measure and Combine

Combine all the ingredients into a small saucepan and bring to a boil on low heat. To measure your honey you can either use a set of measuring spoons or a shot glass pitcher based on whatever you have available.

Stir Until Dissolved

This is the most involved part of the recipe, requiring little more than a whisk and some patience. Gently whisk the ingredients together, ensuring that your honey is completely dissolved and incorporated. Your mixture should smell sweet and fragrant by the time it reaches a boil. You don’t want to boil for very long as the heavy cream will thicken more and more the longer you do.

Serve Hot and Enjoy!

My preference for this recipe was to use a whole cinnamon stick, so you’ll need to remove it from your saucepan before serving. If using powdered cinnamon, simply cut the heat and serve immediately.

Latte Miel

If you have an espresso machine, you can whip yourself up the kind of Café Miel I would serve at a coffee shop. This will come out a bit more like a small latte, and again, I’d recommend a coffee that has some depth in body, like the Whole Latte Love Crema Wave espresso blend. If you don’t feel like infusing the honey with vanilla, you can always pair the honey with a vanilla simple syrup following the ratio I mentioned above.

Recipe Details

• Complexity - Low
• Serves - 1
• Prep Time - 3 Min
• Cost ($)

Ingredients

• Espresso - 1 fl oz / 30 ml
• Milk - 7 fl oz / ~200 ml
• Vanilla-Infused Honey - 20g
• Ground Cinnamon - 1 Dash
• Ground Nutmeg - 1 Dash

Equipment

• Espresso Machine
• Frothing Pitcher
• Small Spoon

Step-by-Step Instructions

Combine Your Ingredients

Start by adding your honey and cinnamon to the bottom of your latte cup. Pull your shot directly over the honey and stir gently until the honey is fully dissolved.

Steam Your Milk

This drink is ultimately a honey latte with cinnamon and vanilla, so you should texture your milk as you would for any other blended milk drink. Airier milk foam will result in a thinner drink and you’ll end up with something closer to a latte macchiato with more distinct separation in your layers. If you’ve been practicing your latte art, the cinnamon helps to create a beautiful base for pouring, so get your phone ready!

Garnish and Enjoy!

At this point, all that’s left to do is garnish with a little bit of ground nutmeg and enjoy. The nutmeg adds a nice aromatic component to the recipe that helps to tie everything together, and remember, freshly ground is always better if you can swing it.

Original Café Miel Recipe

While we definitely recommend trying our new recipes, here is the original Café Miel recipe from Whole Latte Love.

3-4 Servings

Ingredients:

• 2 Cups freshly brewed drip coffee
• 1/2 Cup milk
• 4 tbsp. honey
• 1/8 tsp. pure vanilla extract
• 1/8 tsp. cinnamon
• Dash nutmeg

Directions:

Combine all the ingredients into a small pot and bring to a boil on low heat. Stir until honey dissolves. Serve hot and enjoy!

Vanilla Infused Honey

To me, vanilla imparts honey with a creamier, sweeter texture. To be fair, I use vanilla beans with almost all of my simple syrups, almost as a rule. Honey is pretty sweet to begin with, so instead of pairing it with a vanilla bean simple syrup which would just add sugar, why not infuse the honey with some vanilla beans?

The result was subtle, but delicious. This recipe makes a hefty batch of vanilla-infused honey, so you’ll have enough to use again and again.

Start by slicing the vanilla beans open lengthwise and scrape out the seeds. Add the seeds and cut stalks to a medium sized saucepan along with your 40 fl oz of honey. Apply low heat, try not to go over 140° F / 60° C. Stir occasionally so the seeds are evenly spread throughout the honey. I keep it simple and just stir with a thermometer. That way I can monitor the temperature too. Once the honey begins to thin out, remove it from heat

Allow the honey to cool and then remove the vanilla bean pods with a fork or tongs before transferring to a heat safe container. Alternatively you can also pour through a mesh strainer. For an easier time pouring into your container, consider using a funnel or pouring first into a spouted, wide-mouthed vessel like a measuring cup.

Pro-tip: Infusing honey with vanilla (or anything else) without heat takes about a week, so we’re gonna use heat. BUT, honey also doesn’t like high heat, so we’ve gotta strike a balance. You’ll be in good shape if you don’t go over 140 Fahrenheit for too long, but don’t go over 160 Fahrenheit at all.

Using Simple Syrup

If you’d rather just use vanilla simple syrup instead of infusing your honey with vanilla, all you have to do is combine 1 cup of water, 1 cup of sugar, and 2 vanilla beans, split and scraped. Simmer those three ingredients in a pot for 20 minutes, and strain! For a little deeper instruction, have a look at how Nick made a vanilla bean simple syrup for our Shaken Orange Vanilla Cold Brew Recipe. I’ll link that at the bottom of this article for you to check out.

From there, just use 15 grams of honey and a small dash of vanilla simple syrup.

Wrapping Up

This updated version of the Cafe Miel recipe got great feedback around the Whole Latte Love office. After tweaking some ratios and swapping ingredients, we have a well-balanced drink with a creamy mouthfeel. It’s not over-the-top sweet so you can still taste your coffee. I do appreciate the tradition of the Cafe Miel as an after-dinner drink, and I think the addition of the heavy cream instead of regular milk makes it dessert-worthy… although I sometimes make it first thing in the morning.

Photography by Grace Walker

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