I am a huge macchiato drinker, and because it is fall I thought it would be fun to reveal to you guys The Starbucks Caramel Pumpkin Macchiato! The Starbucks Caramel Macchiato is perfection in a cup; it is rich in flavor, creamy and perfectly sweet.

Macchiatos are a mixture of milk, espresso, and some sort of syrup or sauce and can be ordered as a hot beverage or a cold beverage. Because Macchiatos are made up of soft and tasteful ingredients, they are a customer’s favorite. However, Starbucks offers only three types of Machiattos in their “visible” menu: The Hazelnut Macchiato, The Caramel Macchiato and the Vanilla Macchiato. Nevertheless, you can make them taste differently all year round just by asking your barista to drizzle a different flavor of syrup on top, for instance chocolate sauce rather than caramel. Even though this Starbucks life hack is available all year round, the Caramel Pumpkin Macchiato is available only during the fall, since it is the only time of the year Starbucks offers pumpkin spices.

The Caramel Pumpkin Macchiato is created as easily as any of the other Macchiatos Starbucks has to offer. All you do is follow the Caramel Macchiato recipe, but substitute the Vanilla Syrup with Pumpkin Syrup and top your beverage with pumpkin spice. In other words, during the fall you can just ask for a Caramel Macchiato, substitute the Vanilla Syrup with Pumpkin Syrup, and ask for the Pumpkin Spice topping. The Caramel Pumpkin Macchiato is available in four sizes, short (or extra small), tall (or small), grande (or medium), and venti (or large), and is consisted of a decent amount of calories, anywhere between 200 to 500 depending on the size of your cup and the amount of syrup that was drizzled.

As you can probably guess, recreating this beverage is extremely easy. All you’re going to need is milk of your preference, 1-2 shots of espresso (this depends on the size of your cup & coffee tolerance), pumpkin syrup and some pumpkin spice. However, if you want to recreate the cold version of the Starbucks Caramel Macchiato make sure to have around ¼ of a cup of ice. Once you have all of your ingredients you are going pour about 1/3 of a cup of milk into a pan and allow it to get warm. Then you are going to pump two to three pumps of pumpkin syrup into your cup (two if it’s a regular sized cup and three if it’s a relatively big cup). It is important to keep in mind the size of your cup when pumping the syrup because if not you can make your beverage either to sweet or too bitter. Once you milk is all warmed up simply pour it into your cup and sprinkle some pumpkin spice. If you want to go all out with your drink you could first add whipped cream and them sprinkle your pumpkin spice. In order to recreate the cold version of the Starbucks Caramel Pumpkin Macchiato, all you need to do is add the ice before you sprinkle or top your beverage. Eve though it may seem unnecessary to warm up your milk since you will be cooling it off later on, it is important for you to fallow this step since warming up the milk is what adds that bold creamy flavor to your Macchiato.

FUN FACT: The word macchiato means marked.

Reference: “Caramel Pumpkin Macchiato”. Starbucks Secret Menu. Starbucks Corporation, n/d Web. 15 Oct. 2014