Joanne Chang’s Coffee Syrup Recipe

Joanne Chang is a Boston-based pastry chef and the co-owner of Flour Bakery. The award-winning pastry chef has a degree with honors in applied mathematics and economics from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Passionate about baking since her college days, Joanne left her consulting job to work in restaurants, eventually opening Flour Bakery in 2000. Since then, she expanded the bakery to eight more locations, opened a Taiwanese-inspired restaurant, won a reality TV cooking competition and a James Beard Award, and wrote five cookbooks.

Despite her long list of accolades, Joanne still delights in the alchemy of baking: simple ingredients that, when combined with the right techniques, transform into something magical. Learn to bake like a pro with Joanne Chang.

Coffee syrup is a coffee-flavored simple syrup made by dissolving sugar in freshly brewed coffee. Simple syrup is a liquid sweetener made by cooking equal parts sugar and water together in a small saucepan until the sugar dissolves. Swapping the water for espresso or drip coffee yields a similar product that you can use to add coffee flavoring to cakes, ice cream, and more. You can also use the syrup to sweeten and reinforce the coffee flavor in your lattes, cold brews, or ice coffee drinks.

You can produce flavored syrups by infusing a basic simple syrup with additional ingredients, like vanilla bean or vanilla extract for vanilla syrup, peppermint extract for peppermint syrup, or lavender buds for lavender syrup. Substituting brown sugar for white sugar yields a brown sugar syrup with a deeper color and flavor.

Homemade coffee syrup can last up to two months, provided you store it properly in an airtight container in the refrigerator. Learn more about how to store simple syrup.