Sweet Cream Lowfat Coffee Creamer

Coffee is an essential part of my day and I like my coffee with a hint of cream (not too overpowering though as I can drink it black when necessary). As I pulled the bottle of creamer from the fridge to fix Jared a cup of coffee, I thought to myself, "This feels really light I've probably only got enough for one cup." After sending Jared off to work with his coffee, I scoured the kitchen for something that I could use to make my coffee creamy without adding a lot of extra calories (since we are trying to lose weight right now).

Then...all of a sudden...it hit me! I had a couple of cans of sweetened condensed milk in the cupboard that I'd purchased to use for baking over Christmas (I decided not to make the recipe that called for it). Surely, there was something that I could do to use this in my coffee...then I looked at the calories - 130 for 2 tablespoons. Using straight sweetened condensed milk was definitely NOT going to work. So I thought, "Hey, I wonder if I could mix it with skim milk..."

• 1 3/4 cups milk (I tried it with skim but it just wasn't "creamy" enough so I'd suggest whole milk)
• 1/4 cup sweetened condensed milk

Pour the two ingredients into a 2 cup measuring cup or small saucepan and warm in the microwave or on the stove. Stir. Then I took my empty creamer bottle and (using a funnel) poured the mixture into it. I shook the bottle for about 20 seconds to really make sure the two ingredients were combined thoroughly.

There are 32 tablespoons in 2 cups of this "creamer". The calorie content for each tablespoon comes out to 13 calories for skim milk (granted you do have to use a couple of tablespoons to get the same creaminess that comes with store bought creamer) and 16 calories for whole milk, which is a full 4 calories per tablespoon less than store-bought lowfat coffee creamers