DIY Iced Macchiato

Again with Starbucks. I mean honestly, a venti drink costs roughly $5.00, and who has money to spend on that?  Yeah sure I've got it budgeted, but I want to save my coffee budget. For what? I don't know. When I go hog wild and buy the entire Ulta store. lol. Anyway, here's a picture of what you'll need. 

Vanilla Syrup, which you can actually make yourself. 

Milk

Coffee or expresso

Ice

Put the vanilla Syrup in first. You should put enough in to cover the bottom. If you put a lot in, it's super sweet and just doesn't taste good. 

Add the milk. I put in less than half the glass because I want more coffee less milk. Here's a note, about the milk. I personally like 2 % milk, but it really isn't thick enough for the coffee to really sit on top of. It will, but not the same as regular vitamin d Milk. 

It really doesn't matter because it's all going to get mixed anyway. 

Now you add the ice. 

Then pour the coffee in slowly. If you dump it in, the coffee will go directly in the milk and you'll miss that whole slow mixing. 

Now, take that coffee budget!

Stay tuned, I think I'm doing the Chai Latte this Saturday. 

A Day in the life of

Wow, my first vlog. Bear with me as I learn how to make my videos better. I feel fairly decent about this one for being my first long video. I took it all with my phone, too.

I hope to keep doing more, but don't worry, I'll still write. 

As always,

In Search Of. . . Starbucks Secret Menu: Caramel Apple

In Search Of. . . Starbucks Secret Menu: Caramel Apple

During the seasonal times I'll try to do a drink a week so I can get most of them in. It just makes it easier.

This week's drink is the caramel apple, which I don't know if it's how I ordered it, but it would have been more aptly names Apple Pie a la Mode. It didn't have bitter crisp bite of  an actual apple, and was kind of sweet.

Order this:

• Apple Juice to the first line
• Milk to the second line
• Add Cinnamon Dolce Syrup 3 pumps (I got two for my grande)
• Add cream base 3 pumps (Again, 2)
• Add dark caramel 2 pumps
• Topped with whipped cream, caramel ribbon crunch, caramel drizzle and cinnamon dolce topping

Like I said, it should be called Apple Pie a la mode. This one was honestly too sweet for me. I liked the caramel flavor, but the milk and the cream base just made it taste like apple juice ice cream, which sound a lot grosser than it is. I loved all the caramel though, but I'm a huge caramel sauce fan. I got a grande and as a good rule of thumb, I always do two pumps for grande, three for venti. No coffee though.

As always, 

In Search Of. . . . Starbucks Secret Menu: Chocolate Pumpkin

In Search Of. . . . Starbucks Secret Menu: Chocolate Pumpkin

So in the spirit of blazing through the seasonal drinks, I've decided to do another of the Pumpkin flavors. The Chocolate pumpkin.

This one brought me amazing luck with a new job! HUZZAH!

Anyway, It was one of my lunch break because it had been a long day and it wasn't even noon. And for some reason, spending an exorbitant amount of money on coffee just makes me feel better.

Here's what to get

• Order a Pumpkin Spice Latte
• Add two pumps of Mocha

This one was pretty good. Not as good as the pumpkin pie, but still pretty good. It's kind of chocolately for my taste, so I would get one less mocha pump or a venti. If you like chocolate then you should be fine. It just kind of over powers the pumpkin spice flavor. You can get it hot or iced.  got mine iced because it refuses to be cold here.

See, here is where all the extremely stubborn people come. Like seriously you either are stubborn or get stubborn. It would stand to reason that our weather is also stubborn. Now, we've only got to flavors. Hot and mild, but I swear there is a cosmic battle every seasonal change because the current season refuses to give up.

As Always

In Search Of. . . Starbucks Secret Menu: Pumpkin Pie

In Search Of. . . Starbucks Secret Menu: Pumpkin Pie

So, in an effort to get back on track. I decided to get one of the seasonal ones, since PSL is back. I went with the Pumpkin Pie. It was a little bit of an adventure. When I go in to Starbucks, I show the people my phone, and they just ask me about number of pumps.

Well, last night, I did that, but the girl missed one of the key ingredients so I corrected her. Well, she'd written the wrong letter, and scribbled it out. She also got my name wrong.

Apparently my name is Brittany... it's not.
When the barista got ready to make it he looked really confused. "Does this one get 28 pumps of cinnamon docle?" He asked.
I looked at it like no. I like a little heat, but that would have been like doing the cinnamon challenge.
She corrected him. Apparently her srcibble out of the wrong thing looked like an 8 and she'd put a 2 in front of it.

So, no. This does not get 28 pumps of Cinnamon docle.

Anyway, here's the Pumpkin Pie

Here's the Recipe

• Order a creme based pumpkin spice frappucino
• Add Cinnamon Dolce 1-3 pumps. I have a grande and two pumps which is perfect.
• Add Cinnamon Dolce sprinkles. They just substituted regular cinnamon
• Blend in whipped cream
• Top with whipped cream and cinnamon sprinkles. Again, I just had cinnamon and it was perfect.

Ok so whatever ones were my favorite, this one is my favorite favorite so far. It was sooo good. I wish I could explain the amount of excite I had when it tasted that good. It tastes like an actual pumpkin pie. I would most definitely recommend this one before the pumpkin season is over. 

I keep having this feeling it's over next week, but that's probably because there's no season change over here, so I have no frame of reference. Anyway, go get this one now. NOW! 

Here's hoping we find what we're searching for. 

As always

 

In Search Of. . . Starbucks Secret Menu Wednesday: Butterscotch Latte

In Search Of.  . . Starbucks Secret Menu Wednesday: Butterscotch Latte

Well, I started this a while back for no apparent reason I just didn't finish. But, if you go to this post, I kind of tell you what happened... which really now that I think of it wasn't anything.

Anyway, with out any further delay here's the Butterscotch Latte....



Oh look, the creature is trying to be proactive. lol. No, I went out for Starbucks Sunday night and it was humid in the desert so I was cold. I decided to get a hot drink rather than a frappe. I think I'm still scared from the last frappe I had.

I don't remember what the thing was... coffee cake maybe. Who knows? Not I said the cat.

I've been wanting to try the butterscotch latte so I very tentatively ordered it this time. Granted I ordered a Venti, mostly because I wanted a lot of warm.

Here's how you get it:

• Order a latte
• Add Caramel and Toffee Nut Syrup 3-5 (Since this was a century ago, I have no clue what I got.)
• Top with whipped cream, caramel Drizzle and Caramel Brulee Bites (Apparently I didn't get those either. C'est La Vie)

These were my actual opinions that I wrote down the next day like normal. . . I just didn't put the picture on it or post because I'm a nimrod.

This one didn't really taste like butterscotch to me. It tasted good, but I think maybe my ratios were off. It's been a long while since I had butterscotch though, so maybe I've forgotten.

Oh well, it's one of the better tasting ones. 

In Search Of. . . Starbucks Secret Menu Wednesday: Teddy Graham

In Search Of. . . Starbucks Secret Menu Wednesday: Teddy Graham

 

 

Oh, look it's that day of the week again... and not just the one ending in "Y."

It's Starbucks Secret Menu Wednesday, and today's flavor is Teddy Graham. We all remember Teddy Grahams don't we?

 

 

Cute little honey flavored graham crackers that you always bit the heads off first. Or maybe that was just me. Anyway, coming back to the present, that was today's flavor.

 

Here it is in all its glory this time on top of the roof of my Avenger, Natasha. (She couldn't be Black Widow. It's a white car.)

 

 

Actually it all looks like it's floating.... that's kind of cool. The top of the telephone pole looks like a mini straw. And yes, the sky here is really that blue. So that was lunch, and let me tell you, I scarfed that blueberry muffin like it was going out of style.

 

You can kind of see what I ordered there, but not really. I probably should have turned it around so you could see the logo a little better. This was one of their fancy summer cups. I'll stop rambling now and tell you how to order the Teddy Graham.

 

This is a grande, but I think the one in the picture is a tall, so keep that in mind.  

• Order a coffee Frappuccino
• Sub heavy whipping cream for milk
• Add 1.5 hot bar pumps vanilla
• Add 1.5 hot bar pumps cinnamon dolce
• 2 packets of honey
• blend in whipped cream
• Add caramel sauce on the top and bottom
• Add whipped cream and chestnut praline topping... which obviously I didn't have.

So this doesn't exactly taste like a teddy graham, or at least how I remember teddy grahams tasting as a kid. At first I could only taste coffee. No honey or anything. I think he over blended it. When I was dumping it out of the Starbucks cup and into my work approved cup, I got some honey out of the straw, but other than that I couldn't really taste it.

I will say, as it settled and mixed in the work approved cup, I got a lot more teddy graham taste out of it. It could have been the ratio of flavors versus the size.

I'm going to say it was most definitely not the worst one I've had, but it isn't my favorite either. It's very middle of the road.

 

Let me know if you get this and tell me what you think.

 

As always,

 

Here's to hoping we find what we're searching for.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 





In Search Of. . . Starbucks Secret Menu: Butter Pecan Ice Cream

In Search Of.  . . Starbucks Secret Menu: Butter Pecan Ice Cream

 

 

For the sake of future reference, I'm going to drop this to a bi-weekly thing until I can get the coffee budget under control. lol. DRINK ALL THE COFFEES!

 

 

Anyway, yesterday's flavor was the butter pecan ice cream, which just so happens to be one of my favorite ice cream flavor. A good butter pecan ice cream with a little milk poured over it. Yum. So when I saw this one I wanted to try obviously.

 

Look at all the prettiness. Not a lick of coffee either. Joy. X_x
But still good.

All right, so to have the butter pecan ice cream frapp
Ask for:

• Half hazelnut and half vanilla bean
• Blend in whipping cream instead of whole milk
• Add hazelnut syrup.

I really liked this one. Too it's great for people who want Starbucks but don't coffee or don't like it. The unfortunate part of it is the whipped cream instead of milk. I don't like whipped cream that much. It leaves a greasy feeling in my mouth. All whipped cream does.
So it's pretty good.

As always,



In Search Of. . . Starbucks Secret Menu: Snickers

In Search Of. . . Starbucks Secret Menu: Snickers

I'm going to have to start learning to make these things at home. lol I actually started doing this thing call shopkicks to win a Starbucks card. Yay me.

Anyway.

So the snickers bar, happens to be one of my favorite candy bars, so it stands to reason that I was going to have the snickers frappe.

:D Yum!

I even got myself some banana nut bread to go with it. (It'd been a long weekend.)

So order:

• a java chip frappuccino
• 1-3 pumps of toffee nut syrup
• and caramel and chocolate drizzle.  

I think this is a good one. I would order it a second time, but mostly because I like toffee. I had 3 pumps of the toffee in there. It was really strong, but once it settled it really tasted snickers like. I think with out peanut flavor it's hard to get an actual Snickers bar taste. I have no complaints about this one; in fact, I think it's one of my favorites.

In Search Of. . . Something New: Starbucks Secret Menu Oreo

In Search Of. . . Something New: Starbucks Secret Menu Oreo

 

 

Yes, I'm well aware of it being Thursday, and not Wednesday. I had the drink yesterday, if that counts for anything.

 

As I'm getting these drinks, I'm finding that not everything is available when I want it, which almost makes me want to learn how to make everything at home. Wouldn't that be quite the adventure. Apparently, peanut butter is seasonal. Why is entirely beyond me, but that's all right we can have an Oreo instead of a buckeye.

 

 

 

This is my Oreo drink.

  

 

Appreciate this picture.
I looked like a dofus walking around looking for the right lighting at the Starbucks because I didn't want to have another truck picture. lol.

 

 

All right, so you will order:

•  A double chocolate chip frappucino
• Blend in white mocha sauce instead of regular mocha.
• top with either chocolate or regular whipped cream (I got regular obviously)
• Chocolate drizzle

 

 

 

 

This one actually tasted like an Oreo. I was pleasantly surprised. I think I tasted more Oreo creme than chocolate which is fine with me. I'm the person who only eats the creme and leaves the cookies in the tray.

 

I liked this one a lot. I wouldn't get it all the time, but it's really good.

 

 

As always,

 



In Search Of. . . Starbucks Secret Menu: Burnt Marshmallow

In Search Of. . . Starbucks Secret Menu: Burnt Marshmallow

 

Well, it's Wednesday again. And we all know what that means. STARBUCKS. YAY STARBUCKS.

 

Well, again I deviated from the frappuccino, but this time I went with a warm drink. Why? Because of the horribly unseasonably grey sky. I live in the Southwest! I DEMAND SUNNY MORNINGS!

 

Ok, rant's over. On to the coffee.

 

Today's flavor is the Burnt Marshmallow.

 

 

 

I really have too much fun with the photo editor on my phone, but it's a pretty picture, no?

 

Anyway to get a Burnt Marshmallow you follow this.

 

• Order a solo or doppio espresso machiatto. (I'm not sure which one I got. I just handed the guy my phone.)
• Add 1 to 3 pumps of white mocha sauce depending on drink size. (I got a grande so I got 2.)
• Add caramel drizzle

Ok, so first thing I want to say about this is I got a grande that was half full... I don't know if it was supposed to have foam or something, but I got half a drink. I should have ordered a a tall like he started filling out. So... yeah, keep that in mind when you order.

 

This actually reminds me of the McDonalds Caramel Mocha thing. It's good, but not that great. I don't know if two pumps was too many, but the mocha flavor was over powering. So, this one is ok, aside from the fact that there was so little of the coffee. I really should have gotten the tall.

 

As Always,

 

 

In Search Of. . . Starbucks Secret Menu Wednesday: Zebra Mocha

In Search Of. . . Starbucks Secret Menu Wednesday: Zebra Mocha

 

 

Well, I'm back on frappes for now. I got a Starbucks gift card, which makes me happy because I didn't have to pay for this obsession. If you all love me, you'll give me Starbucks cards.

 

No?

 

 

Sad face.

 

 

Anyway, so this week I wanted something that looked chocolaty. I got it. Here is the Zebra Mocha

 

Oh look, I found the saturation tool on my phone. :D

 

Now, if you're in the mood for chocolate, get this. It's super chocolaty with chocolate chips. I stopped getting any of these with an extra shot of coffee, because the others ones I've tried with coffee haven't turned out right.

 

Here's the recipe:

 

Order a mocha with half white chocolate and half regular chocolate.

Add java chips.

Chocolate sauce on the top and then I think you can get nuts. (The picture on the secret menu has something on it that looks like nuts, but it doesn't say.)

 

 

I didn't mind this one. The coffee flavor wasn't prevalent which is kind of sad, but it's good for a chocolate fix.

 

 

As always,

 



In Search Of. . . Something New: Starbucks Secret Menu Wednesday: Orange Peach Delight

In Search Of. . . . Something New: Starbucks Secret Meny Wednesday: Orange Peach Delight

 

 

I got a little bored with the Frapps, and besides after the Red Velvet flop, I was ready for something new. With the warmer months coming, sometimes it's nice to break up the coffee monotony and get something a little different.

 

This time I opted for an orange peach delight.

 

 

 

 

Sometimes I have too much fun with the settings on my phone, and it was a really beautiful day.

 

 Here's how we get it:

 

• Order an Orange Valencia Refresher
• Get 3-6 pumps of peach syurp depending on size and preference.

The girl who made mine told me that peach syrup is really strong, so I only put 3 pumps.


This was a different flavor. It was kind tangy, like a sweet tart. I thought it was good, so did my friend. My mom wasn't as impressed. This one is good for a hot day too.

In Search Of. . . Something New: Starbucks Secret Menu Wednesday: Red Velvet

In Search Of. . . Something New: Starbucks Secret Menu Wednesday Red Velvet


Hey, look it's Wednesday again. Time to treat myself to a new Starbucks drink and give my honest opinion.


And, just by the way  disclaimer, not all the flavors are available to me. For example, I tried to do the Samoa one, and they didn't have the coconut syrup. Apparently that's still in the trial phase. So, yeah. . .

Anyway, enough ranting. Today is about the Red Velvet Frappuccino
Why? Because they didn't have the stuff for the black forest one. (See above GIF for sentiments.)


So, Red Velvet. Here it is in all my truck's glory...





Pretty Right?


Here's what to get:

• Half White Chocolate Mocha
• Half Regular Mocha Frappuccino
• 2 pumps of raspberry syrup (3 for a venti).
• Whipped cream.

And... the final results are






keep scrolling

They

Are

not so great!

It doesn't taste like a red velvet cake, because velvet cakes are just chocolate cakes with food dye added to them. This would be better named Raspberry Chocolate. Either way it's not my cup of tea... or coffee, or beverage of choice. It wasn't bad, but I don't think it was worth the 6.00 that I paid. I didn't even finish it.

Oh, well... live and learn and then get loves...



Wait, that's not right.

As always,
Here to hoping you find what you're searching for.

In Search Of. . . Something New: Starbucks Secret Menu Wednesday 1

In Search of. . . Something New: Starbucks Secret Menu Wednesday

 So. . . with my new IPhone I went a little app crazy at first. Now, I think I paired it down tolerably well to the essentials: Pinterest, G-Mail, Facebook, but among these things suddenly appeared the Starbucks Secret Menu. I decided to put this app to the use of the blogging world.

 

Welcome to Starbucks Secret Menu Wednesday

 

This Wednesday we will test the Butter beer Frappuccino.

 

I had spent the week watching, or rather listening to the Harry Potter movie series with my roommate. As I scrolled through my Starbucks Secret Menu deciding what new thing to try, I found the butter beer Frap. It was a sign. I had to do it.

 

Here it is too. All nice and pretty.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now the one in the picture on the secret menu looks like a grande. Since it’s always been more cost effective to me to order the venti, I got a venti. After I added all the shots, it was kind of expensive.

   

So to get this deliciousness in you, here’s your order:

 

• Crème Frappuccino base
• Add 3 pumps of caramel syrup— 4 if you get a venti
• Add 3 pumps of toffee nut syrup—again, 4 if you get a venti.
• Then top with a caramel drizzle.
• I added an extra shot of espresso

 

 

So much goodness…

soo many much calories. . . many much calories.

 

 

So completely worth it.

 

 

Anyway, it’s amazing. You should try it and tell me what you think.

As always,