Recipe • Butter Coffee
Who among you has sworn off coffee because it doesn’t fit into your clean living regime?
Coffee is one of the first things to be sacrificed on the altar of health and giving it up is a sign you’ve committed to the task of upgrading yourself. Curiously, I never hear people say the same about matcha or yerba maté, despite both containing similar amounts of caffeine.
I’m unapologetic about my love of coffee, it’s always represented something bohemian for me and I spent a lot of my teenage years reading old novels set in far flung places, where artists would spend their days writing and socialising in cafés, nurturing endless cups of the stuff.
Every morning I hand-grind coffee beans for my morning coffee; however decadent that sounds, for me it’s a rebellion against the quickening of life symbolised by instant coffee.
Personal rituals help take us out of the everyday and elevate moments which would otherwise pass unnoticed and unaware; they’re times where we can appreciate moments alone or savour with others. After all, life is merely a series of moments strung together and we never know when our last coffee will be drunk.
I heard about Dave Asprey and his Bulletproof coffee way back in 2013, but it wasn’t until I went to a friend’s house and tried his version using cream and coconut oil that I was converted. Some people are devoted to bulletproof coffee and the literature mentions all kinds of wonderful benefits of drinking it including weight loss, stabilized gut health, mental clarity and strength primarily due to the presence of fats, which take time to break down, resulting in the slower release of caffeine and less chance of hunger pangs mid-morning. As with all research, there is likely to be as much that disagrees with it as confirms it and in the end the clincher for me was that I prefer the taste of it to normal coffee. That is as good enough way to make a choice as any, in my book.
MOVEMENTUM MORNING COFFEE
- Aeropress
- Metal Aeropress Filter
- Hand Coffee Grinder
- 2 Tbsp - Coffee Beans
- 1 Tsp - Butter - 1tsp
- Double Cream - to taste (unless you’re a black coffee kinda person)
PROCESS
Hand grind the beans and add to the Aeropress. Add the butter to the bottom of the cup.
I use the inverted Aeropress method which you can see here (note: I’m not obsessed about timings, water temperature or freshly roasted coffee beans as some of the tutorials mention). Once the coffee is made, stir until the butter is melted. Add double cream to taste.
Bulletproof coffee is blended together like a frappucino; I personally feel that is too big a commitment first thing in the morning.
TIPS
i. I use double cream instead of milk as it is rich and milk cools the coffee too quickly; I like it searing hot or else it’s lukewarm.
ii. Make sure you screw the filter cap of the aeropress tightly shut before using it. I didn’t and it meant I had to clear up loads of hot coffee grinds that exploded throughout the kitchen. It wasn’t the best start to the day.
iii. I use my Keep Cup when I go out to reduce waste from those pesky paper coffee cups.
- F
I went out the kitchen to make coffee - yards of coffee. Rich, strong, bitter, boiling hot, ruthless, depraved. The life blood of tired men.
- Raymond Chandler
The Royal Society for Public Health has called for the introduction of ‘activity equivalent’ calorie labelling and have suggested packaging containing information on how much physical activity it takes to burn off the calories. Many of the public health interventions are focused on the individual taking full responsibility for their health, however it must be noted that the environment around us has a huge impact on the decisions we make.