DIY Starbucks Strawberry Puree (it ain't just strawberries)

You weren't foolish enough to think that the Starbucks strawberry puree was made with just pureed strawberries were you? Well I was foolish enough to think that but of course I was wrong. Starbucks actually refers to their strawberry puree as a strawberry puree sauce and here's the full list of ingredients. Strawberry puree, white grape juice concentrate, water, fruit and vegetable juice for color, natural flavors, xanthan gum, and citric acid. Now that's what Starbucks puts in their version but my homemade version is made with just three simple ingredients. Fresh strawberries. This recipe will work best with fresh strawberries so make sure to make it lots during strawberry season but I'm sure that you could thaw frozen strawberries and use those during the offseason. The flavor probably won't be quite as good though. Sugar. Feel free to leap out the sweetener if you prefer to make this without any added sugar. However I find that a bit of sugar helps to enhance the strawberry flavor. I'm pretty sure that this is less sugar than Starbucks uses so feel free to increase to your taste preferences. Strawberry flavoring. This is optional but to get that strong strawberry flavor like the Starbucks version you can add a bit of strawberry flavoring. I use this one from Frontier Co-op but there are other ones on the market as well. I don't like a strong artificial strawberry flavor so I use just one quarter teaspoon. Now Starbucks uses white grape concentrate to sweeten their strawberry sauce. I couldn't find any white grape juice concentrate in the grocery stores near me so I tried using apple juice concentrate instead. However I found that the apple flavor overpowered the strawberry flavor too much so I would just skip it and use cane sugar instead. Now of course you're going to start by washing your strawberries. I know I don't have to tell you to wash your fruits and veggies first but I love a good strawberry washing sequence so... Next remove the leafy part on top. Cut each strawberry in half into a 2 cup measuring cup until you have 2 cups. I recommend cutting the strawberries in half to measure them because it will be a little more accurate than just measuring whole strawberries. Finally add the sugar and strawberry flavoring, if using, to the measuring cup on top of the strawberry halves. Now it's time to puree the strawberries. My personal favorite tool for the job is a hand blender. I love that you can puree the strawberries in the same container that you measure them in. Anything to save on dishes. But I have made strawberry puree in a regular blender in the past and I'm sure you could use a food processor as well. This is totally optional but you can run the puree through a fine mesh sieve if you want to remove the seeds. I'm personally unbothered by the seeds but that's always an option. Store the strawberry puree in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to five days. Now after making many batches of strawberry puree while recipe testing I understand why Starbucks uses additional ingredients. You see strawberry puree tends to go bad rather quickly even while stored in the refrigerator so adding extra ingredients probably helps to slow down the decomposition or molding process. You could cook the strawberries first to help preserve the puree longer but I prefer a fresh strawberry flavor and I'd rather skip the cooking step. To help circumvent the short shelf life you can pour half of the strawberry puree into ice cube trays. Once frozen transfer the strawberry puree cubes to a freezer safe zippered baggie or another freezer safe container. Then you can just pop a frozen cube into an airtight container and put that in the refrigerator the night before you want to use it and it will be thawed and ready to go in the morning. Starbucks uses their strawberry puree sauce in their strawberry creme frappuccino, strawberry sweet cream also known as cold foam, blended strawberry lemonade, frozen pineapple passion fruit lemonade, and frozen strawberry acai lemonade. My favorite way to use the strawberry puree is to make homemade strawberry sweet cream and pour it on top of an iced matcha latte and you can get the full recipe for that in this video. Starbucks strawberry puree was made with just... I feel like I'm saying puree to preserve the puree longer. Puree. Puree. My favorite way to use it...