Starbucks has been whipping up its famous cold foam since 2014, but it wasn’t until 2018 that it became available nationwide. Even then, nobody anticipated it’d become what it is today. From green, matcha cold foam to pink, cherry flavored cold foam, and from purple-hued lavender cold foam to chocolate, Starbucks’ cold foam has evolved into a menu item in its own right, bringing color, flavor, and texture to all of its iced drinks. One of the most popular options, however, is Starbucks’ salted caramel cold foam, made with just two additional ingredients you can easily recreate at home.
Starbucks’ original cold foam recipe is made with just three ingredients: heavy cream, reduced-fat milk, and vanilla syrup. But adding a bit of salted caramel flavor isn’t quite as complicated as you might think, with Starbucks’ recipe calling for the addition of just homemade or store-bought caramel sauce and a pinch of sea salt. Added in addition to the vanilla syrup or as a substitute, all you need is about a tablespoon of the sauce to give your homemade cold foam a salt caramel upgrade as good as Starbucks’ — and while its baristas might use the store’s own blenders to make theirs, you don’t have to.
Whether shaken up in a lidded mason jar or container, whisked by hand or a stand mixer, or whipped together in a countertop or immersion blender, all you need are the right ingredients for a frothy cold foam at home.
Other cold foam flavors are just a couple of ingredients away
Considering how simple Starbucks’ cold foam recipe is to achieve, customizing it at home isn’t much more complicated than it is in stores, requiring just a swap or addition of a couple of ingredients to recreate any of your favorite flavors. The salted caramel cold foam is just one example. Starbucks’ chocolate cold foam, for instance, can be made easily by adding a scoop of cocoa powder to the blender before you mix it. The same thing goes for matcha cold foam, which only needs a bit of matcha powder to give any drink you make at home an aesthetic layer of green, frothy foam. You can even make a strawberry cold foam for your at-home iced lattes, either by substituting a store-bought strawberry compote or syrup for the vanilla in the original recipe or making your own from scratch at home.
Knowing that creating your own, customized cold foam flavor at home is as simple as substituting the vanilla syrup for another flavor of coffee syrup, your creations can be as easy as using whatever flavor you find in stores or online – Monin being the absolute best. For instance, with blueberry syrup, you can make a summer blueberry iced coffee-inspired blueberry cold foam for your iced coffee. Or, in the fall, you can use a pumpkin spice syrup to make your own pumpkin spice cold foam. There truly are no limits.
