One of my favorite things to do is go to Starbucks to start my morning. It makes me feel productive and always puts me in a great mood. However, going to Starbucks is expensive, and going there a few times a week can add up pretty quickly. I decided to attempt to make my four of my favorite Starbucks items at home and see how they compared.
- Iced chai latte
-
First, an iced chai latte (either with nonfat milk or oat milk) is by far my favorite drink to get at Starbucks. I don’t do well with drinking caffeine, so a chai latte is a perfect drink for me. I know this drink is easy to make because it’s just milk and chai concentrate. For this, I bought Planet Oat milk (my favorite) and Tazo Chai Concentrate. I don’t think it is the exact chai Starbucks uses, but I’ve heard this is one of the most similar tasting. It was delicious after stirring ice, oat milk, and the concentrate in a cup with a straw. This is definitely an affordable and easy version to make at home, and I think I will have to keep making this in the future to cut down on the amount of money I spend on chai lattes.
- Pink drink
-
I love the taste of the pink drink from Starbucks (and the strawberry tea by itself), and I knew there were only a few ingredients, so I decided to try and make this one myself. All I had to buy was Ocean Spray Pink Cranberry Juice and coconut milk. After mixing a little bit of coconut milk with the cranberry juice, I liked just the plain juice the best, and it tasted really similar to the Strawberry Acai Refresher from Starbucks. Both versions were great and super easy to make!
- Egg bites
-
The egg bites from Starbucks are so good, but they are expensive, and I could eat so many of them at once. There are tons of recipes to recreate these online, but this one is my favorite. When I make these, I love to add potatoes, spinach, tomato, broccoli, and any other vegetables I have. You can make a bunch of these at once and freeze them for later, so it’s definitely worth the effort to make these at home!
Spoon University - impossible breakfast sandwich
-
Next, I wanted to make my own version of the Starbucks Impossible Breakfast Sandwich. The only bad thing about this is that it’s expensive. It’s so delicious — it’s my go-to food item from Starbucks, — and I recommend it to everybody, even if you’re not vegetarian! There were a few more ingredients to make this than the other items, but I bought ciabatta rolls, impossible breakfast sausage, cheddar cheese, and eggs. The ingredients did get slightly expensive, but they ended up being delicious. Cooking the egg and impossible sausage, and then assembling the sandwich did not take too long. It was so delicious and I will definitely keep making these!
While I definitely will not stop going to Starbucks to pick up my favorites, I love being able to recreate these items at home to save a little bit of money.
Can’t get enough of HC UMass Amherst? Be sure to follow us on Instagram, listen to us on Spotify, like us on Facebook, and read our latest Tweets!