Grow up, chocolate milk. Coffee milk is the real adult treat.

Once upon a time, you were a little kid who had to drink milk to get big and strong. It was fine, but it probably wasn’t fun. Much like eating your vegetables, milk was less a beverage and more like a responsibility. Milk, the TV ads told us, did a body good.

But sometimes, if you were a good little child, you’d get treated to chocolate milk, and it would make you feel like a million bucks. This was not the mandatory milk you chugged for calcium and vitamin D! This was luxury milk.

Eventually you grew up, and milk became mundane. You didn’t need it quite as much as you once did. Maybe for cereal, or cooking, or your coffee. Milk faded into the background, and chocolate milk got filed away with other so-called childish things.

But don’t be sad about this! There’s no reason to be wistful for the small joys of simpler times, because you can still appreciate them now. Feeling like a kid, if only for a few minutes, can keep you from forgetting that almost anything can be magical. Even milk.

I’m glad I didn’t know much about the litany of luxury milk possibilities outside of chocolate, as it’s given me a world of small, delightful surprises to experience in adulthood — a time when I need small, delightful surprises more than ever. Like coffee milk!

I don’t mean an iced latte, cafe au lait or anything involving brewed coffee. I mean milk mixed with a few spoonfuls of sugary coffee syrup, which is how they do things in Rhode Island.

Since it’s the smallest state, it can be easy to overlook, no matter how remarkable its regional specialties may be. Maybe that’s why coffee milk never became a national phenomenon, even though it should have.

Coffee milk doesn’t come with a caffeinated buzz or an aggressively bitter bite. It’s as rich and creamy as chocolate milk, but to my irritatingly precocious inner child, it also has an air of urbanity about it. When I was 5, I desperately wanted to be seen as a budding sophisticate, and coffee was just about as mature as a beverage could get. Why else would the adults tell us we weren’t allowed to have any?

I suppose that in Rhode Island, children can be trusted with such refined tastes. In fact, coffee milk is such an important part of the cultural identity, it’s the official state beverage, and, until relatively recently, it was served in school cafeterias. I hope everyone who grew up in Rhode Island knows how good they had it, because after discovering coffee milk in adulthood, I sure was jealous.

In New England, it’s relatively easy to find bottles of coffee syrup in the supermarket. But for the rest of us, homemade will do just fine, and, like most syrups, it’s simple to make. And once you’ve tried it in coffee milk, you can use it in all sorts of other drinks where chocolate syrup usually holds sway. A prime example from my New York upbringing: Egg creams. Coffee syrup takes the childhood indulgence up a notch, starting with a base of milk and flavored syrup, then adding soda water, which causes it to form a fluffy white head reminiscent of egg white foam.

What’s especially wonderful about coffee milk and egg creams is that they don’t take a lot of time to turn back time. Once you have the syrup in hand, these drinks can be whipped up in seconds, and for a few short, desperately needed minutes, they send your soul back decades, to an age when there was nothing quite as important as a lovely little treat.

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Coffee Milk

For the coffee syrup

⅔ cup water

1 cup granulated sugar

Pinch fine salt

¼ cup instant espresso powder

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

For the coffee milk

¾ cup cold milk (any fat level; regular or nondairy), plus more to taste

2 tablespoons coffee syrup, plus more to taste

Make the coffee syrup: In a small saucepan over medium-high heat, whisk together the water, sugar and salt until the sugar dissolves. Bring to a boil and remove from the heat. Whisk in the espresso powder and vanilla until the powder dissolves. Let cool completely. You should have about 1¼ cups. Transfer to a jar, bottle or other resealable airtight container, and refrigerate until cold, at least 2 hours.

Make the coffee milk: Fill a 10-ounce glass with about ¾ cup of the milk. Stir in the coffee syrup; taste, and add more syrup, if desired. Depending on how much syrup you add, the mixture could range from light to dark beige. Gently add more milk to top, if desired, stir and serve immediately.

Substitutions: Can’t have caffeine? Use decaffeinated espresso powder.

Variation: To make a coffee egg cream, fill a 10-ounce glass about one-third of the way with milk, then pour at least 2 tablespoons of coffee syrup down the inside of the glass. Using a fork, vigorously beat the milk, much like you would an egg, while slowly pouring in ice-cold seltzer until the foam reaches the top. Continue whisking until the foam subsides a bit, then add a little more seltzer. Repeat until you have a beautiful head of foam about 2 inches thick. Serve immediately.

Servings: 1

Notes: The coffee syrup needs to be prepared and chilled at least 2 hours in advance of preparing the drink. Refrigerate the coffee syrup for up to 2 months. Instant espresso powder, such as DeLallo and Medaglia d’Oro, can be found at well-stocked supermarkets, Italian markets and online.

Nutritional Facts per drink |Calories: 167; Fat: 4 g; Saturated Fat: 2 g; Carbohydrates: 28 g; Sodium: 114 mg; Cholesterol: 15 mg; Protein: 6 g; Fiber: 0 g; Sugar: 29 g

— Allison Robicelli