Valentine's Day may be over, but I think there's still a little bit of love in the air. Sidenote: If you're also feeling the love, you may want to head on over to our Share the Love contest before it closes! 

Now, back to business; because I'm still feeling all warm and gooey from all those delicious desserts I've been eating this Valentine's, I asked our local coffee place Sense Appeal to help create a drink based on a red velvet cupcake! They came back with a recipe for a cherry chocolate cappacino and let me tell you- it was good. 

Step 1- Create Syrup: Create a simple syrup with equal parts water and sugar. You'll need to heat the mixture up a bit so that all sugar is dissolved, then boil the mixture. Check out this video tutorial here for more details. For this recipe, 2 cups of syrup was created with 1 cup of water, 1 cup of sugar. 

Step 2- Create Cherry Puree: For this drink you'll need 1/2 cup of cherry puree. The puree is basically just cherries and sugar mixed together and blended for a smooth consistency. 

Step 3: After creating both the cherry puree and the simple syrup, add the puree to the syrup along with a 2 tbsps of cocoa.


Step 4: Place mixture in saucepan, whisk together and simmer. Take off heat and refridgerate mixture to cool. It should develop into a thicker consistency. Once cooled, pour about 2 tsps into saucepan or frother. 


Step 5: Add milk to the syrup and froth together. Add enough milk to almost fill mug, you'll also be adding espresso so leave room. If you don't have a frother on hand, pour milk and syrup into saucpan and whisk together quickly to get foam. 



Step 6: Brew espresso and add 1-2 shots into mug. To this, add your syrup and milk mixture. 


If you wanted to get fancy, you could do something clever like this! 


Obviously, I didn't produce this drink, I left it in the very capable hands of the professionals, I did however get to enjoy it and I hope you do as well!