Over the years, we’ve collected quite a few recipes for making coffee-shop and vending machine inspired homemade snacks. It’s all much cheaper than buying them at restaurants or cafes. Here they all are, collected into one handy post.
Cheap Homemade Snacks
- Make a cheap mocha at home. I think these are just as good as what you can easily spend $4 on at a coffee chain. Even if you don’t quite think so, they’re pretty darn good and way, way cheaper.
- Prefer chai lattes? Make yours at home. This is really fun because the recipes are so tinkerable – it’s hard to screw them up if you get the basics right, and they’re so delicious.
- Make your own instant cappuccino mix. I love this because you can take it to work or on the road. You can keep it in a drawer at the office and have a really rich, delicious snack anytime you want it.
- Make your own Cinnabons. An ooey, gooey, delicious cinnamon bun recipe.
- Want some homemade marshmallows with your mocha or cappuccino? Okay, so these aren’t necessarily cheaper than store-bought, but they’re fun to make and really tasty.
- Energy drinks. Why pay for some company’s TV advertising campaign when you can make these yourself?
- Make Starbucks’ recipe muffins and pastries at home with these recipes. Takes a good bit of work, but if you enjoy baking at all, you can bake a dozen, freeze them, and every day you microwave one and take it with you and your homemade mocha, and it’s like you went to Starbucks except you didn’t have to stand in line and pay through the nose.
- Bake your own energy bars. Takes a bit of work, but the cost savings compared even to buying them in bulk is amazing. And you can easily tweak recipes to come up with your own unique creations or avoid additives or whatever you want.
- Make your own frozen dinners. Even TV dinners are insanely expensive these days. It’s pretty easy to make your own frozen, microwaveable dinners with these simple steps.
- Make your own lollipops at home. If you’re making them for kids, they can make up their own flavor combinations.
- Make your own liqueurs. Make your own versions of Bailey’s, Kahlua, etc. Extreme cost savings here!