Flavored iced coffee is one of the best pick-me-up beverages. They taste like delicious desserts and go down smoothly as any light beverage. The best thing about flavored iced coffee is that it lets you have your daily caffeine fix in summer without the heat of freshly brewed hot coffee. Making iced coffee at home is quite simple. If you like light flavors, you can add a little bit of vanilla, or perhaps some chocolate to your iced brew.

But these are your regular flavored iced coffee. If you want to add interesting twists to your traditional flavored iced coffee, you can play around with different ingredients to create unique and yet delicious variations of iced coffee.

Here are a few recipes to get you started:

• Speed dater flavored iced coffee : This recipe gives a healthy twist to your flavored iced coffee. For this, you will need, a cup of cold coffee, one and a half cups of almond milk, half a cup of chopped and pitted dates, one teaspoon vanilla, a pinch of salt, and a cup of ice cubes. Mix and stir all the ingredients together. Fill a tumbler with ice cubes and pour the cold coffee with dates over the ice.
• Mint flavored iced coffee : This flavored iced tea gives an extra kick and a refreshingly minty taste.

Make a cold brew concentrate by mixing a half cup of freshly ground coffee in 2 cups of cold water. Let this brew stand at room temperature overnight or for 8 to 12 hours. Then strain the coffee through a fine sieve twice and store the coffee concentrate in the refrigerator.
While the coffee concentrate is in the process, you can make coffee ice cubes. Make a fresh cup of coffee, black if you like. Let it cool and then pour it into an ice tray and let it chill and freeze. To make the mint syrup, heat one cup each of water, mint leaves, white sugar, and a vanilla pod in a saucepan. Stir continuously until the sugar melts. Strain it and let it cool at room temperature, and then keep it in the refrigerator. While serving, put in a few coffee ice cubes, pour the mint syrup (as per your taste) and pour the coffee concentrate.

Savory iced coffee : This recipe gives pleasant sweet-and-salty taste to your regular iced coffee. Whip one cup of whipping cream till you get a thick consistency. Stir half a teaspoon of sea salt or kosher salt in the cream and set it aside. Make 4 cups of strong coffee and let it cool. Add 6 to 8 tablespoons of sugar to the coffee. While serving, pour the coffee over ice cubes and top it off with the salted cream.