It is starting to get hot outside and for me, an iced coffee in the morning really hits the spot. Lately, I have been really enjoying the basic iced coffee from Starbucks. The recipe for the Starbucks iced coffee is pretty simple, it is just their Terraza coffee, brewed at double strength, over ice. Overall, I really enjoy this on a hot summer day and would highly recommend it to any regular coffee drinker.

Iced coffee might not be for everyone

For me, iced coffee in general was an acquired taste. It took me some time to really start to enjoy it. For some reason, the strong taste of coffee tasted a little off when put over ice. However, after some time and quite a few iced coffees, I really started to enjoy them. For those of you who are not huge iced coffee fans, I would encourage you to give it a few more tries to see if iced coffee grows on you.

Mixing it up

Since this is a coffee I will regularly get, I often like to mix it up by adding a few squirts of a flavored syrup. My personal favorites are vanilla and hazelnut. Mixing it up between plain and these 2 flavors can really help mix up the flavor of my morning coffee.

Calories

One great thing about this is that it is just normal coffee over ice. So, before you add any cream, sugar, or flavoring, it is very low on calories. I know I mentioned I like to add a few squirts of flavoring and these can add some calories if you are not careful. I prefer to go for 2 pumps which amounts to about 40 calories according to livestrong(http://www.livestrong.com/thedailyplate/nutrition-calories/food/starbucks/vanilla-syrup-by-the-pump/). If you don’t specify, you will get 4 pumps which is 80 calories.

Overall, the Starbucks iced coffee is a great way to get your much-needed caffeine on a hot summer day without consuming a ton of calories in the process.

This was a guest post by Dominic Acito of http://www.dominicacito.com. Feel free to check out his blog for great articles about many different subjects. Google+