Three Iced Coffees That Are Better Than Starbucks!

Wow. Hey guys, it's Zong, and today we are gonna recreate your favorite Starbucks iced coffee drinks. So the first one we're gonna try is this brown sugar shaken espresso with oat milk. I don't know if I taste the brown sugar, but I definitely get Aunt Jemima vibes. Like the syrup here kind of just reminds me of pancake syrup, but it's not bad. I like it. Let's see if we can make it a little better. Okay, so to make the brown sugar syrup, it's really, really simple, and it's not gonna taste like pancake syrup. I'm actually gonna be using this dark muscovado, which is a type of brown sugar that just has a really rich flavor. If you don't have dark muscovado, you can always use dark brown sugar, and that's just fine too. So I'm gonna add a quarter cup of this. Then I'll add about a teaspoon of vanilla extract just to get that sweetness floral note in, and then about a tablespoon of water just to dissolve and get everything melty. I'll turn up the heat, and then we'll let it dissolve and get nice and syrupy for about three to five minutes. Ooh, it smells nice and syrupy, and actually it thickened up really fast in like a minute. And of course, if it has thickened up too much for you and you want it a little more syrupy, just add some water and just mix it. So on Starbucks' website, they say they shake their espresso with the brown sugar syrup and then top it with some cinnamon, so we're just gonna do that. I get a lot of questions about where I got the shaker from, and I've listed it for you guys in the description box below. So I'm gonna pour in the espresso. So I have two shots of espresso there, cause I need it. And then I have the brown sugar syrup. So with making your own, you can always add as much or as little of brown sugar syrup as you'd like. I don't like it super sweet, so I'm just gonna do half. Top it with some cinnamon, and give it a good shake, shake, shake. I love how it has that foam from the shaken espresso, but now we're gonna add oat milk. I'm using the barista blend here. I don't know how different it is from just regular oat milk. I feel like it might just be like thicker, creamier. We'll see. On top, it says steams remarkably, but we're not steaming it. So any oat milk will do. That is delicious. Let's see how it differs, or how similar these two taste. This one is definitely a lot more concentrated in flavor. And I don't know why, but every time I try to recreate a Starbucks drink, and then I try theirs, theirs always ends up tasting synthetic to me. I love the sweetness, and just like the deep flavor from the muscovado sugar in there. And then that hint of cinnamon, you don't want too much in there because you don't want it to overpower, but there's just enough of a hint to make it interesting. And the oat milk is so creamy. This one's delicious. Okay, so the next one, doesn't really look like what the picture looks like. This is the vanilla sweet cream cold brew. Doesn't really look like it. I guess they just shook it up before, but it would have been cool to see the swirls, but let's give it a try. This one's actually delicious. Wow. I definitely taste the vanilla, and it's really yummy. So what I was expecting when I ordered this drink was just a layer of the cold cream on top. And I guess it's not really foamy, so I can see why it's blended, but I was thinking it would look a little bit more swirled in with the cold brew, but I guess they just pre-shook it for me, but it's still really good. I'm gonna start by making our cold brew, and it's super simple. I have some coffee grounds. For this size mason jar, this is just like your standard size. I'm using a quarter cup of coffee grounds. I like using a French roast, just something really robust. And then I'm gonna add a little bit of water, stir it up to help the coffee grounds bloom. And you wanna add cold, oh my, and you wanna add cold water to this. Now just give it a stir, and just wait for a minute or so until all the grounds are nice and wet. And the reason why I'm doing this is because if I were to pour the water all the way up and then just cap it and then put it in the fridge, the coffee grounds would soak up all the liquid, and even though you filled it all the way to the top, it's gonna shrink down quite a bit. So we're just giving it some time to soak up some water, so we don't have to refill it later, but if you wanted to, that's fine too. And now just fill it all the way up to the top. Cap it up and put it in the fridge. Now for our vanilla sweet cream component. So I noticed their sweet cream foam is not super thick like a whipped cream. It's kind of thin, so what I'm gonna do is mix some whipping cream with some milk to thin it out, but we're gonna do it in layers. So I'm gonna start by adding our heavy cream into this pitcher, some vanilla extract for the vanilla flavor. So now I'm gonna whip up my whipping cream with this Aero Latte. It whips things up beautifully, and I like it in a small, like something small like this, but you can always use a hand blender or your hand mixer. As I am whisking this up, I'm gonna slowly drizzle in some sugar. I'm just incorporating a lot of air into it, so you can start to feel it thicken up. I'm gonna drizzle some milk in there just to thin it out. Since this is like foam, I'm not making it into something like a dalgona where you whip it up really frothy and thick. You just want it to sit on top. Okay, this looks good. Yeah, it's nice and foamy, but still kind of liquidy so that it runs through the coffee, just like the one that they have advertised on the photo, not like the one they gave me. All right, so now we're gonna pour in our cold brew. I just put this in the fridge overnight, so it's nice and cold. Always have a strainer to filter out the coffee grounds. And now we pour our vanilla sweet cream on top. Looks beautiful. So as you can see, there are little markings from the cold brew that kind of got through, the coffee grounds that got through. So since I usually have my coffee ground at the store, there's always a little bit residual that kind of, you know, that you get. But if you want it to make your own cold brew, always try to go for a coarser grind. Yummy. Definitely tastes strong. Like, yeah, if you need an afternoon jolt, this is the one that you will get. The vanilla sweet cream is very faint in this because it's still sitting on top. I probably could have stopped a little earlier, keep it a lot more liquidy, but not like this liquidy where you don't see it. But again, it's like a total customizable preference thing. Let's see how it compares. This one is still really good. Yeah, both really good. And now we're gonna try this one I saw on TikTok. It's super popular. It's the ice hazelnut latte with sweet cream foam and a caramel drizzle. I was excited to see this because there is that sweet cream layer on top, which is what I was expecting this to look like. But the sad thing about this is that the caramel drizzle, I don't really see that much caramel. I got maybe like a swipe. It definitely does not look like this. Wow. This one's actually really delicious. And you definitely taste that sweet cream. It's kind of foamy, it's cold. Okay, so first I'm gonna add our espresso into my shaker. And then for our hazelnut flavoring, you can either use a hazelnut syrup, which I tend to not like that much. But I did find this hazelnut creamer by NutPot that I actually really like. I really like shaking my iced coffee these days. So I'm gonna cap it and shake it. Now to my glass, we'll just add some milk. If you wanted your latte a little bit sweeter, this is where I would add the simple syrup. But because there is a drizzle of salted caramel on top later, I'm good. This one is unsweetened by the way. Now we're gonna take our shaken espresso and pour it in. Take the vanilla sweet cream, fill it to the top. And finally, a good drizzle of salted caramel on top. Let's get that salted caramel in there. That is decadence in a cup. Okay, so let me break it down. I definitely taste the hazelnut. I definitely taste the hazelnut from this. And because it's unsweetened, it's not like tooth achingly sweet, but it's still very much a treat because I taste the salted caramel in there too. It's just a combo of hazelnut and salty caramel. Like who knew that would go so well together? These TikTokers sure know what they're talking about. This one is super sweet. At the end of the day, these drinks from Starbucks are really good, making it, I feel like, is a lot cheaper and easier on the wallet. And you can control the sweetness amount. I mean, this one you technically could too, but it's always just really sweet. And when comparing the two, the one from Starbucks always, always tastes a lot more synthetic than the ones that you make at home. So let me know what your favorite iced coffee drink from Starbucks is and what you guys want to see me recreate on my YouTube channel. If you guys want to see more videos like this, don't forget to hit that like button and subscribe. Thank you so much for watching. I'll see you guys next time. Bye.