A completely homemade copycat Starbucks Caramel Macchiato recipe. Easy to make from scratch and absolutely delicious!
The photos in this post have been updated. Don’t worry. You’re in the right place. 😉
Some of the recipes I post go through careful planning and consideration before they come forth into the world. Some are complete accidents. This is one of the latter.
While the family was all together for the holidays, I made caramel sauce for one of our pies and had a ton left over. I hate wasting food, so I started putting it on everything, including my mom’s morning coffee.
My mother, being a huge Starbucks fan took one sip and said, “Hey, this is better than Starbucks!” And thus, this post was born.
To be 100% honest, my Starbucks drink of choice is their white chocolate mocha , but I did try one of their caramel macchiatos just so I could compare the two, and I definitely prefer this one. I find the homemade flavors a little brighter, a little stronger.
Plus, YOU can control the level of sweetness which is always my biggest beef with Starbucks drinks.
And I know this doesn’t technically qualify as an authentic macchiato because it simply uses cream instead of foamed milk and strong black coffee rather than espresso, but Starbucks plurals their panini “paninis,” so they’re not exactly a paragon of Italian authenticity either. 😉
This recipe is both wonderful and terrible because you are not limited by whether or not you have caramel sauce at home to make it. You whip up the caramel yourself in five minutes flat. So if you keep heavy cream on hand (which I do), you can make these any time you feel like it (which I definitely shouldn’t).
The finished product has a robust caramel flavor but isn’t too artificially sweet the way so many caramel creamers are. It’s delicious. It’s amazing. It’s better than Starbucks.
And if you are looking for more tasty coffee drinks, try my Pumpkin Spice Latte (Two Ways!) , Eggnog Latte , Easy Homemade Mocha , and White Chocolate Peppermint Mocha .
Ingredients
Caramel Sauce
- ▢ 2 tablespoons ( 1 oz) unsalted butter
- ▢ 1/4 cup heavy cream
- ▢ 1/4 cup ( 50 g) packed brown sugar
- ▢ 1/4 teaspoon salt
- ▢ 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
Coffee
- ▢ 1 cup of your favorite strong black coffee very hot
- ▢ 1-3 teaspoons sugar*
- ▢ 1 tablespoon heavy cream
- ▢ Whipped cream optional
Instructions
Caramel Sauce
- Melt butter in a small saucepan over medium heat.
- Add heavy cream, brown sugar, and salt. Stir well.
- Bring to a gentle simmer and allow to cook for 4 minutes, until thickened, stirring occasionally.
- Remove from heat and mix in vanilla. Transfer to a mason jar with a lid for storage.
Mix
- Stir coffee, 1 tablespoon of the caramel, sugar, and cream together. Taste and add more sugar if needed.
- Top with whipped cream and another drizzle of caramel if desired.
- Drink and enjoy that $4.50 you just saved yourself.
Notes
Nutritional Information (1 tablespoon sugar, no whipped cream) Caramel adapted from Smitten Kitchen
Small-batch Information: This sauce can be a little tricky to cook in a small batch because it very easily overcooks and becomes hard candy. But if you watch it like a hawk, you can halve it and cook for 3-4 minutes. I wouldn’t try quartering.
Original photography, circa 2016.
This Light and Healthy BLT Salad is a delicious twist on a favorite diner classic.
We’re officially halfway through January. Are your resolutions holding up? I hope yours are going better than mine! I’m finding it pretty difficult to limit the sugar right now, because while it may be healthy January, I’m eyeballs deep in Valentine’s Day recipe testing (spoiler: I’ve got some really good ones coming up for you).
Let’s just say there have been indiscretions with cinnamon rolls that if you follow me on Twitter , you are probably already privy to… And it’s a fact of life that it’s a lot harder to find people to pawn sweets off on in January than it is in December! Anyways, enough my sugar intake, on to the salad.
We’re in week three of our salad series. We’ve had a Garlic Chicken Cobb Salad , a Simply Delicious Asian Chicken Salad , and now you’re getting a healthy BLT Salad! Guys, this salad is so good AND you can make it 100% in advance, so it’s so convenient for nights you know are going to be crazy busy or as a delicious brown bag lunch.
It’s basically a deconstructed BLT sandwich. You have your B-bacon, crumbled throughout. The L-it’s a salad, so that’s obvious. T-tomatoes, you can use whatever kind you like and jam this thing full of them. And the BEST part, is you turn the bread into homemade croutons cooked in bacon grease.
Yes, you heard me. You toast those babies up in the leftover bacon grease and they are as amazing as it sounds. Top the whole thing off with a light mayo dressing (all the deliciousness, a fraction of the calories) and you’ve got yourself an American diner classic, minus the diner and the guilt!
Have you read my post The Fastest, Easiest Way to Cut Romaine for Salads ? It’s my very favorite kitchen hack ever!
Ingredients
Salad
- ▢ 4 strips of bacon cut into 1-inch pieces
- ▢ 4 slices french or sourdough bread cut into 1/2-inch cubes
- ▢ 1 large head romaine lettuce chopped
- ▢ 2-3 tomatoes chopped
- ▢ Kosher salt to taste
Dressing
- ▢ 2 tablespoons mayonnaise
- ▢ 2 tablespoons milk
- ▢ 1 tablespoon white vinegar
- ▢ 1/8 teaspoon black pepper
Instructions
Bacon & Croutons
- In a large skillet, over medium to medium-high heat, cook bacon until crispy. Remove from pan with a slotted spoon, leaving the grease.
- If there is too much grease in the pan for you, you can pour some of it off. You only need about 2 tablespoons to toast your croutons, but the bread will soak it up whatever’s there, so you can leave as much as you want. Add bread and cook on medium heat until brown and toasted. Stir frequently, making sure not to let your croutons burn. Remove from heat.
Dressing
- In a small bowl or mason jar, stir together mayonnaise, milk, vinegar, and pepper.
Assemble
- Just before serving, combine lettuce, tomatoes, cooked bacon, croutons, and dressing in a large bowl and toss until everything is coated in the dressing. Divide and serve with a sprinkle of salt over the top. Enjoy!
Notes
Nutritional Information Adapted from: The Splendid Table
A slightly spicy chicken salad packed with black beans, corn, red onions, and cheese and topped with a chipotle cilantro sour cream dressing.
As sad as it is, all good things must come to an end, and we find ourselves today reaching the end of our January salad series. We’ve been all over the map with these salads. There was the hearty Cobb Salad , the delightfully sweet and fruity Asian Chicken Salad , a BLT in a bowl with the Light and Healthy BLT Salad , and for our last salad, we are going south of the border with a Slightly Spicy Chipolte Chicken Salad!
I should say, I call it slightly spicy because that’s how I like it, but with a couple minor tweaks, this could be burn-your-taste-buds-off spicy. It’s up to you. Whatever your preferred spice level, this salad is the antithesis of the boring greens that come to mind when you think of healthy salads. There are beans, corn, red onions, chicken, and cheese, all topped with a chipotle cilantro sour cream dressing. Oh yeah, and there’s lettuce too.
You definitely won’t feel like you are eating something healthy when you taste this one. It’s perfect for those nights when a giant pile of nachos is just screaming your name. Seriously, give it a try and for a third of the calories, you more than get your cheesy, Mexican food fix.
And as though this salad needed more to recommend it, it’s one of my favorite make-ahead dinners. You can do all the prep work in advance and when you are ready to eat, you just throw everything in a pan to heat and then serve over a bed of cool, crisp greens. It doesn’t get better than that.
I really wish pictures could do this salad justice. Processing these images after taking them, I described this salad to someone as the ugliest, most delicious f-ing salad in the world. That amazing spicy chipotle gives the dressing a slightly red tinge, which over the lettuce makes everything just this side of purple. And purple’s not a good look in food photography. Let’s just say, much cursing was done trying to make this salad look as out-of-the-world tasty as it actually is. But that’s okay, because the photo shoot may have been a disaster, but I still got to eat this salad when I was done.
Ingredients
Special Equipment
- ▢ Meat mallet
- ▢ Instant-read thermometer
Dressing
- ▢ 2/3 cup ( 160g ) sour cream
- ▢ 1/3 cup fresh cilantro minced (loosely packed)
- ▢ 1 canned chipotle chili in adobo sauce seeds removed, and minced*
- ▢ 1 teaspoon lime juice
- ▢ 1 teaspoon ground cumin
- ▢ 1 teaspoon chili powder
- ▢ 1/4 teaspoon salt
Salad
- ▢ 1 large head romaine lettuce chopped
- ▢ 1 pound (about 2 small) boneless skinless chicken breasts pounded thin
- ▢ Salt and pepper
- ▢ Taco seasoning or a little cumin and chili powder
- ▢ 2 tablespoons chicken broth or water to deglaze pan
- ▢ 1/2 small red onion cut root to tip and sliced thin vertically
- ▢ 1 15-ounce can black beans rinsed and drained
- ▢ 1 can whole-kernel corn drained
- ▢ 1-2 tomatoes chopped
- ▢ 1 cup sharp cheddar cheese
- ▢ Crushed tortilla chips for topping optional
Instructions
Dressing
- Combine dressing ingredients in a small bowl and mix. Set aside.
Chicken
- Salt and pepper chicken and sprinkle with taco seasoning (or a little cumin and chili powder). Grease a pan with cooking spray and cook the chicken over medium-high heat , 5-8 minutes per side, until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the center of the breasts reads 160°F. Set aside on a plate.
- Deglaze the pan with a little chicken broth or water, scraping the cooked brown bits off the bottom and pour over chicken. Let rest for 5 minutes, dice, and set aside.
Vegetables & Beans
- Spray the pan with a little more cooking spray and add onions (if you like crunchy onions in your salad, you can skip this step), cooking until they are cooked just shy of your preferred level of doneness. Add beans and corn and cook until heated through. Put chicken back in the pan and mix well.
Assemble
- In a large bowl, combine lettuce, chicken mixture, dressing, and tomatoes. Toss well so that everything is coated in the dressing and serve. Top with cheese and a few crushed tortilla chips if desired. Enjoy!
Notes
Nutritional Information Adapted from: MyRecipes
A completely homemade copycat Starbucks Caramel Macchiato recipe. Easy to make from scratch and absolutely delicious!
The photos in this post have been updated. Don’t worry. You’re in the right place. 😉
Some of the recipes I post go through careful planning and consideration before they come forth into the world. Some are complete accidents. This is one of the latter.
While the family was all together for the holidays, I made caramel sauce for one of our pies and had a ton left over. I hate wasting food, so I started putting it on everything, including my mom’s morning coffee.
My mother, being a huge Starbucks fan took one sip and said, “Hey, this is better than Starbucks!” And thus, this post was born.
To be 100% honest, my Starbucks drink of choice is their white chocolate mocha , but I did try one of their caramel macchiatos just so I could compare the two, and I definitely prefer this one. I find the homemade flavors a little brighter, a little stronger.
Plus, YOU can control the level of sweetness which is always my biggest beef with Starbucks drinks.
And I know this doesn’t technically qualify as an authentic macchiato because it simply uses cream instead of foamed milk and strong black coffee rather than espresso, but Starbucks plurals their panini “paninis,” so they’re not exactly a paragon of Italian authenticity either. 😉
This recipe is both wonderful and terrible because you are not limited by whether or not you have caramel sauce at home to make it. You whip up the caramel yourself in five minutes flat. So if you keep heavy cream on hand (which I do), you can make these any time you feel like it (which I definitely shouldn’t).
The finished product has a robust caramel flavor but isn’t too artificially sweet the way so many caramel creamers are. It’s delicious. It’s amazing. It’s better than Starbucks.
And if you are looking for more tasty coffee drinks, try my Pumpkin Spice Latte (Two Ways!) , Eggnog Latte , Easy Homemade Mocha , and White Chocolate Peppermint Mocha .
Ingredients
Caramel Sauce
- ▢ 2 tablespoons ( 1 oz) unsalted butter
- ▢ 1/4 cup heavy cream
- ▢ 1/4 cup ( 50 g) packed brown sugar
- ▢ 1/4 teaspoon salt
- ▢ 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
Coffee
- ▢ 1 cup of your favorite strong black coffee very hot
- ▢ 1-3 teaspoons sugar*
- ▢ 1 tablespoon heavy cream
- ▢ Whipped cream optional
Instructions
Caramel Sauce
- Melt butter in a small saucepan over medium heat.
- Add heavy cream, brown sugar, and salt. Stir well.
- Bring to a gentle simmer and allow to cook for 4 minutes, until thickened, stirring occasionally.
- Remove from heat and mix in vanilla. Transfer to a mason jar with a lid for storage.
Mix
- Stir coffee, 1 tablespoon of the caramel, sugar, and cream together. Taste and add more sugar if needed.
- Top with whipped cream and another drizzle of caramel if desired.
- Drink and enjoy that $4.50 you just saved yourself.
Notes
Nutritional Information (1 tablespoon sugar, no whipped cream) Caramel adapted from Smitten Kitchen
Small-batch Information: This sauce can be a little tricky to cook in a small batch because it very easily overcooks and becomes hard candy. But if you watch it like a hawk, you can halve it and cook for 3-4 minutes. I wouldn’t try quartering.
Original photography, circa 2016.
Better Than Starbucks Caramel Macchiato
Ingredients
Caramel Sauce
- 2 tablespoons ( 1 oz) unsalted butter
- 1/4 cup heavy cream
- 1/4 cup ( 50 g) packed brown sugar
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
Coffee
- 1 cup of your favorite strong black coffee very hot
- 1-3 teaspoons sugar*
- 1 tablespoon heavy cream
- Whipped cream optional
Instructions
Caramel Sauce
- Melt butter in a small saucepan over medium heat.
- Add heavy cream, brown sugar, and salt. Stir well.
- Bring to a gentle simmer and allow to cook for 4 minutes, until thickened, stirring occasionally.
- Remove from heat and mix in vanilla. Transfer to a mason jar with a lid for storage.
Mix
- Stir coffee, 1 tablespoon of the caramel, sugar, and cream together. Taste and add more sugar if needed.
- Top with whipped cream and another drizzle of caramel if desired.
- Drink and enjoy that $4.50 you just saved yourself.
