Starbucks mocha powder-can I replicate it at home?

[eydie6]

My husband makes his own mocha's using this powder. Its 5.00 a pop and he goes thru a lot. I want to try to figure out who to make it at home.

The ingredients:
sugar,cocoa (processed w/ alkali),vanillin (an artificial flavor)

Any ideas? Is there such a thing as powdered vanilla? What do you suppose the alkali does?

[wallycat]

I'm not an expert at this but...
isn't Mocha Flavor just a combo of coffee and chocolate??
So he brews a cup of coffee and uses any store brand of hot cocoa mix or uses cocoa powder with some sugar (to taste) and a few drops of vanilla extract....

Am I making it too easy and this won't work?? any experts out there?

[Grace]

Cocoa processed with alkali is just "Dutch" processed cocoa. So you can buy any dutch processed cocoa (found in the grocery store - sometimes called "european cocoa") and add some sugar, and in the baking aisle you can find vanilla sugar (in little packets made by Dr. Oetker), or make your own vanilla sugar by putting a vanilla bean into a container of regular or powdered sugar - keep replenishing the sugar - the vanilla bean lasts a good long time. But the whole mixture is pretty much your basic hot cocoa mix (the kind you mix with milk, not water).