A drink For My Friend? (Nestlé Coffee Mate)

Member Name: Emmald

Product:	Nestlé Coffee Mate
Date:	17/04/09 (202 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A good way to make a creamy cup of coffee.

Disadvantages: Nothing major

How many times have you been caught out? The milk is running low and there's no time to nip out to the shops and then the doorbell rings, this is when a jar of Nestle Coffeemate is worth its weight in gold. I used to keep some of those individual pots of coffee cream in for the unexpected but to be honest Coffeemate is a far better proposition.
Nestle have more than one Coffeemate to offer us nowadays, there is the ordinary version, the virtually fat free type , Coffeemate original and Coffeemate Latte Creations Vanilla.
I had never even heard of the last one on the list! But it is a whitening agent with sugar and vanilla flavouring that you add to your coffee to make a tasty latte apparently.

I use the original Nestle Coffeemate, a 200g tub comes in at around £1.14p, sometimes you can manage to find it a touch cheaper but not a lot.
When you look at the tub you are in no doubt about the contents. For starters the tub is coffee coloured , on the front is a steaming hot mug of coffee that looks inviting and the steam rises from the mouth of the white china mug to form a heart shape. Nestle have put their logo and the product name right inside of that steamy heart.
The cardboard tub has a light golden plastic lid that just pulls off and inside there is a layer of foil that has been put there to keep the Coffeemate fresh until you start to use it.

So what sets Coffeemate apart from ordinary whitening agents.
I always have a can of Marvel in my cupboard, when it is reconstituted it is brilliant for sauce recipes and I also need Marvel to use in my bread maker. But if you put it into a cup of coffee it does just whiten the coffee and no more, its far more bearable in tea though.
Nestle have mixed glucose syrup and vegetable fat to make their Coffeemate so when you spoon it into the hot coffee it does create a smooth and very pleasant taste and texture. I have brought texture into the equation because some dried milks and coffee whiteners can taste very `grainy`.

So to your cup of hot black coffee add two heaped teaspoons of Coffeemate and then stir it in well. Each 200g tub contains over thirty servings so it does go a long way.
The powder melts into the hot coffee and instantly lightens the hot drink though it doesn't make it as light as when you add milk maybe.
If you have added ordinary milk to your coffee you have whitened it but not enriched it, the Coffeemate makes the drink taste fairly rich and silky to drink.
Another thing that you have to take into account is that ordinary milk cools the boiling hot coffee but Coffeemate powder doesn't, so you will need to leave the drink to cool for a while.

A 6.5g serving contains 36 calories, 0.6g sugar, 2.2g fat, 2.2g saturated fat, 0.1g salt.
Glucose syrup is used in Coffeemate, this syrup is widely used in the food industry and is not as sweet as normal sugar.
Nestle have used hydrogenated vegetable fat, if you are trying to lose weight then this is not an ingredient that you will want to see, hydrogenated fats are also considered to be bad for you in general .
Coffeemate contains stabilisers, E340, E452i and E331and emulsifiers E472e and E471. These additives prevent the ingredients separating but all food stabilisers, emulsifiers, thickeners and gelling agents are closely monitored by the Food Standards Agency.
Milk proteins add nutrition to the product and an anti-caking agent helps the powder to flow freely.
The colour E101 is added to help the powder create that creamy looking cup of coffee.

Sometimes it does give you a jolt when you closely study the list of ingredients in a certain product but given that we only have a small amount of Coffeemate on a not too regular basis I am sure that we need have no major worries at all.

I think it does the job admirably and does help to create a creamy cup of tasty coffee.
Maybe next time around I will be tempted to try the one for Latte coffee. It sounds good!

Summary: Good creamy coffee.