Make Mine A Large

There are three things that always bring infinite joy to my life.
Pajama's.
Baking.
And cups of coffee.
To say I'm reasonable without a cup of coffee would be fair. To say I'm a snappy moody psychopath would probably be more accurate. Coffee is my life blood and has served me well through early mornings, uni deadlines, hangovers, illnesses and many a energy dive.
However, I'm not one of these people who need twenty cups of coffee a day in order to function and are so jacked up on caffeine you can see their eyeballs shaking. I'm a one-big-cup-will-do kinda gal. I'm sure they must put mood enhancers in the coffee at Starbucks because nothing makes me as happy as a Skinny Caramel Latte, and now that red cups are back for Christmas with it has come my all-time-favourite-coffee, The Eggnog Latte, two cups of which I've enjoyed already since the start of red cups season. If Starbucks were a religion, id be the patron saint, I've never been let down by the coffee and to make life even better they do their own gluten free cakes and sandwiches. This folks, is what heaven looks like.
Anyway, This post isn't meant to be me waxing lyrical about S-bucks. Hey, I know not everyone likes coffee, some people like tea...I know a girl who doesn't even drink hot drinks (you know who you are you weirdo!) everyone has their poison and mine is coffee. I've got more coffee mugs than the queen has hats.
I'm very much from the school of thought that coffee can come in any guise as long as its a cup of coffee, because lets face it not everywhere has a Costa or Starbucks or even a decent peculator, some places only survive (god help them) on vending machine coffee. If the need is strong enough its any port in a storm.
However. There are several instances of coffee cruelty I can't abide, these include cold coffee (if I wanted a frappe I'd have asked for one), De-caff (I can sniff a placebo a mile off), Mocha's (the coffee wusses drink of choice) and the mother of all coffee insults...weak coffee. Ugh. Anaemic coffee is quite frankly an insult.
Back to the post. I've been making coffee cake and coffee cupcakes for a good few years now, and its always a crowd pleaser, but several weeks back I decided a good coffee cake shake up was in order and had a good scour of all my baking and cook books for some ideas. In the end, I thought of something all by myself (I'm like that sometimes, I'll have a flash of brilliance once a decade), Latte frosting, genius right? I'm sure its been done before somewhere out there, but I tried it using cream cheese and it was a hit, using the cream cheese does make for a sloppier runnier frosting which you can't pipe, but its so sticky and yummy and goes so well with the coffee cake that you won't care its running off the cake and up your sleeve. 

The heavenly Eggnog Latte

Just a fraction of my mug collection

L-R, Starbucks mug which I in no way pilfered, and my uber cute Paperchase mug