The third coffee
There is a moment in the afternoon when you want something warm in your hands and you know the coffee is a bad idea.
You have it anyway. Everyone does. And then at nine, when the house is finally quiet and you have twenty minutes that belong to you, you are awake in a way that has nothing to do with wanting to be.
That is the cup we have been thinking about. Not the first coffee of the day, which nobody should give up, but the third one. The one you drink because the afternoon needs a shape, not because you need the caffeine.
The Sunshine Latte is what we made for that cup.
What it actually is
Organic coconut milk powder, coconut water powder, organic saffron and cardamom. That is the entire ingredients list, and it is worth reading twice, because very few powdered drinks survive being written out in full.
Two tablespoons, 14 grams, into warm milk. Each serving carries 130mg of organic saffron. It is caffeine-free, dairy-free, plant-based, and there are 14 servings in the pouch.
No brewing, no straining, no soaking threads in hot water for twenty minutes while the moment you wanted them for passes.
The cardamom is why it tastes like something rather than like a supplement. Saffron on its own in milk is delicate to the point of being easy to miss, and the cardamom gives it an edge to hold onto. If you have had a good cup of chai, you already know the note.
Saffron has been cherished for centuries for supporting emotional well-being and vitality, and it is the heart of this cup.
If you have used our saffron powder pods, this is a different thing. The pods are the daily measure, 125mg of saffron each, meant to go into whatever you are already making. The latte carries 130mg a serving and brings the rest of the drink with it.
The recipe is Saba Rahbar's, a holistic chef and nutrition consultant who works with women and new mothers. She built it for the part of the day that belongs to everyone but you.
How to make one
Four minutes, and the only skill involved is not boiling the milk.
- Warm 200ml of milk. Any milk, or water if you would rather. Dairy, oat and almond all work, and oat froths best if you care about that. Warm, not boiling. You want steam, not bubbles.
- Add two tablespoons and whisk. That is 14 grams, and tablespoons are the measure printed on the pack rather than a scoop in the pouch. A small whisk, a milk frother, a fork and some patience. Whisk until the powder has gone.
- Drink it warm. It does not hold well. Make it when you want it.
Iced, for a Dubai October. Dissolve the two tablespoons in a splash of hot water first, then pour that over cold milk and ice. Straight into cold milk leaves you with powder at the bottom and a pale drink on top.
When to drink it
Anywhere in the afternoon, and the reason is simple. Caffeine-free is not much of a feature at eight in the morning. At four it is the entire point. Coffee gives you the jitters now and the crash later. This gives you a warm cup and a calmer pause, and you still sleep.
The window that works for most people is the half hour after the school run, before the evening has started asking for anything. It is the only reliably quiet part of a weekday afternoon, and a drink that takes four minutes fits inside it without needing to be scheduled.
If your afternoon is shaped differently, the rule underneath is the same: pick a moment that already exists in your day and put the cup inside it. A ritual you have to find time for is a ritual you will stop doing by November.
What it costs
Fourteen servings, AED 95. That is about AED 6.80 a cup.
You already know what your afternoon coffee costs, so we will leave that comparison to you. The number worth having is ours, because saffron is the one ingredient where a price with no arithmetic behind it tells you nothing at all.
Saffron is sold by the gram and priced like it. A pouch that does not say how many servings are in it, or how much saffron is in each one, is asking you to take the price on trust. We would rather you did the sum. Every product we sell publishes the grams, the servings and the cost per serving, and if one of ours ever does not, tell us and we will fix it.
One honest note
Saffron is a food. We sell it as one.
There is research on saffron and there are things we could quote at you, and mostly we choose not to, because a warm cup at four o'clock does not need a study attached to it to be worth having. What we will stand behind is what is in the pouch, where it came from, and what it costs per cup.
The pack says it plainly: consult a healthcare professional if you are pregnant, nursing or under medical supervision. It also contains coconut, which matters if that is an allergy in your house.
Try it
The Sunshine Latte is here, AED 95 for 14 servings.
And if you are new to us, join the newsletter before you order. It is 10% off your first order, and after that it is one email a month about what we are making and how to use it. No more than that.
Made one? Send us a picture of your cup. We would like to see it.