DIY Pumpkin Cream Cold Brew 2 Ways

Friends, it’s October 1st. Aka the official start of ~*spooky szn*~, the commencement of Thotmn™, and apparently…today is also National Pumpkin Spice Day???? I did not invent this holiday, but I was born for this holiday.

If you follow me on Instagram (which you probably do, because this near defunct site has an audience of about 5% of my IG following and my mom), you may have heard of my devotion for Starbucks’ seasonal drinks. Most of the time I don’t give a shit about Starbucks (or kid myself into thinking they have good coffee), but as soon as they roll out their holiday drinks, my inner basic unleashes herself and my Starbucks expenditure rises exponentially, all the way from Pumpkin Cream Cold Brew through Peppermint Mocha szn.

But if you’re like me, obsessed with the pumpkin cream but also kind of broke because you just bought a house and shouldn’t be spending $5 a pop on a cold brew you could make blindfolded at home, I have obsessively been attempting to recreate it a DIY version, to varying levels of success. I’m giving you the pumpkin cream recipe two ways: one DEAD RINGER, spot on, slightly more work up front version, and one that is more realistic considering that most people probably do not care enough to source Starbucks’ pumpkin sauce online. Not a dead ringer, but pretty damn close, and still better than the bullshit “copycat” recipes you’ll find online.

First, I need to break down the architecture of the drink. When you order the pumpkin cream cold brew from Starbucks, they serve you cold brew sweetened with a couple pumps of their vanilla syrup (I ask them to omit this because the cream is sweet enough for me, but to each their own). Then the sweetened cold brew is topped with pumpkin cream, which is just Starbucks’ year-round vanilla sweet cream with a couple pumps of their seasonal Pumpkin Spice Sauce added. To accurately recreate the pumpkin cream, you need heavy cream (or dairy-free creamer of choice), a splash of milk, pumpkin spice sauce, and vanilla syrup. That’s it. Easy, right?

Well…yes and no. It’s only a few ingredients, but difficult to recreate. This is because Starbucks uses “natural flavors” for both their pumpkin spice sauce and their vanilla syrup. It turns out that real pumpkin pie spice (aka the blend of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and ginger often used in pumpkin pies) is a little gritty, and doesn’t taste the same as Starbucks’ lab-created natural spice flavoring. I’m sorry, but sometimes the more processed thing just tastes better. Same with Starbucks’ vanilla syrup – you can get close with vanilla extract, but you’re missing those “natural vanilla flavors” that enhance the drink.

Starbucks’ syrups and sauces are like the MSG of coffee drinks. Just like MSG enhances food more subtly than regular salt (and I will passionately defend the merits of MSG until I’m on my deathbed), so has Starbucks painstakingly created “natural flavors” that somehow taste better than the real thing, all part of their ploy to get you addicted to their seasonal drinks, of course. The same flavor engineers who created the Nacho Cheese powder for Doritos probably engineered the natural pumpkin spice and vanilla flavors after a few clinical trials with lab rats.

So that leaves us with two options: 1) a more natural recreation of Starbucks’ sweet, sweet nectar-of-the-gods pumpkin cream and 2) a full embracement of their natural-but-kinda-artificial flavor. I’m not embarrassed to say I prefer the more processed version, or that I bought a jug of their black market pumpkin spice sauce off eBay, and went to my neighborhood Starbucks on National Coffee Day not to buy coffee, but to snag a bottle of their vanilla syrup to bootleg my own version at home. But in case you don’t want to do that, I’m providing you with a pantry-staple version that’s still really good! Just, you know, more natural than the “naturally flavored” version.

If you want to fully embrace the season, I recommend serving in these adorable Harvest Juice Glasses from Anthropologie or your favorite mug of choice.

There you have it. Happy Pumpkin Spice Day, basic betches!