Works-For-Me Wendesday: Using the Coffee Maker With Ease

Good morning and welcome to this installment of Works-For-Me Wednesday. Once again, thanks to Shannon for her lovely idea and please visit her blog to view all the other great participants. Please swing by and visit last week's installment where I shared how you can make that old awful spice rack usable again!

Today I am going to talk a little bit about my single cup coffee maker. My husband purchased this gadget for me as a gift because I make horrible coffee. Not just horrible coffee, but HORRIBLE coffee. Make-you-grow-hair-on-your-chest-and-chew-the-coffee-for-days coffee. With this in mind, he decided to get me a coffee maker that is great for the novice at brewing coffee. Unfortunately, you can only fit short coffee mugs under this brewing machine and what I really want to do is pour this coffee directly into a thermos cup so I can take my coffee to go. I also had trouble stirring the ingredients once I poured the coffee into the thermos cup because it was too tall and my stirrer wasn't tall enough. This became a huge mess every morning and I ended up with more coffee on my counter (from the pouring and the stirring) then I ended up with in my cup.

I came up with the idea of pouring my coffee directly into a glass measuring cup. I pop the measuring cup in and have it brewed directly into that. Then I pour in my milk and sugar (the measuring cup helps to keep accurate measurements of how much milk I like in my coffee), stir it up, and easily pour it into the thermos mug. This idea could also be applied with regular coffee makers if you are brewing just one or two cups.

I also cover the measuring cup with plastic wrap and let it chill overnight for iced coffees in the morning. Squirt a little chocolate syrup, add some milk, add a little sugar and you have a delicious drink for those hot summer mornings.

If you are interested in more coffee talk, you can visit Coffee Geek & Single Serve Coffee for great forums on sharing on how to make that perfect cup.