dunkin' donuts: no longer delish

like any good geek, i loves me a good cup pot of coffee (always decaf, though -- my motor runs best on unleaded). as documented on my old myspace blog a few years back, i have a "thing" for dunkin' donuts coffee (that's a rachael ray poster to the right, adorning my local dd earlier this spring). imagine my cautious optimism when my dd closed for remodeling a few months over the summer. it was like a season-ending cliffhanger: would the coffee still be as good? would all my favorite counter girls return? would i finally get to see what an egg white flatbread looked like?

well, i'm hear to tell ya that my new local dd has sunk into the fast food corporate mire. gone are the days when i could drive up to the window, look the dd worker in the eye, order my coffee, and have them whip it up in front of me on the spot. now, i have to order in the back of the building into one of those annoying speakers, drive around, pay one girl while another unseen person (hiding somewhere inside the bowels of the newly remodeled store as to avoid the customers' wrath, obviously) makes my coffee. sure, it tastes the same (albeit suspiciously assembly line-like), but all the ambience is gone. the interior of the store is worse. don't ask.

then there's the price. i truly didn't expect the price of coffee to stay the same given the extensive overhaul of the store, but get this: i used to order one large and one medium decaf iced coffee (one for now, one for later or tomorrow) and paid what i thought was a reasonable $3.28. it's mostly water, for crying out loud. the new price? a whopping $4.56. yikes. an increase of fifty or even seventy-five cents i could've understood, but $1.28? no way!

drastic times call for drastic measures.

i've experimented with iced coffee recipes in the past and now, in my hour of need, i've finally concocted a recipe that is every bit as good as dd's decaffed iced...and best of all, it's ridiculously cheap in comparison! here's the 411:

webchyk's dd iced coffee recipe (makes 1 very large drink or two smaller ones)

• two level tablespoons and one teaspoon of folger's instant decaf coffee (you may substitute 4 maxwell house's decaf coffee singles -- simply steep them in the hot water for several minutes. i like the folger's 'cause it's faster. as you will see, this isn't as much coffee as you might think: the instant and singles individual coffee measurement of one teaspoon/bag is for six ounces of water, not eight. i'm using standard eight ounce measurements. and of course you may adjust the amount of coffee for your taste. i find these amounts closest to what my local dd's iced coffee tastes like. if you don't wanna use decaf, try regular and let us know what it's like. thanks!)
  
• 1.5 cups hot water (i have a 1200 watt microwave -- i nuke the water for 1 minute and it's perfect. you don't want it too hot, just hot enough to dissolve/steep the coffee.)
  
• 1 cup cold water
  
• ice (i use about a dozen cubes)
  
• splenda, sugar, cream, cinnamon, pumpkin pie spices, whatever you'd like to add to your iced coffee...or not.
  
• a very large plastic -- not glass -- glass (check your dollar store. they usually have four 32 ounce plastic coca-cola go glasses for $1. perfect if you want to take your coffee with you because you can simply throw away the cup and it'll still be cheaper than dd.)

place your instant coffee (and sweetener, if you're using it) into your glass. add the hot water and stir. add the cold water and stir. and cream and other coffee accoutrements if you're using them, and stir. add ice. stir some more and then let the ice melt for a few minutes. this will not only chill your coffee but further dilute it to its perfect yummo goodnees. enjoy!

if you really wanna have fun: add eveything except the ice cubes to a blender. whip it a bit. add about six ice cubes. blend well. pour over more ice.

if you try it, post here and let me know what you think.