Starbucks Brown Sugar Cloud Frappuccino

The Starbucks Brown Sugar Cloud Frappuccino costs £6.90 for a Tall and carries 319 calories in a Grande. Frappuccino Roast, milk and ice are blended and layered with a brown sugar flavour cream cold foam rather than whipped cream.

The cloud foam is what the range is named for and it behaves differently from whipped cream. It is lighter, it holds its own shape rather than melting into a lid, and it sinks slowly through the blend instead of sitting on top, which gives the drink a marbled look and means the flavour reaches further down the glass. Brown sugar brings a molasses depth that plain caramel does not have, and it suits the coffee base better than a sweeter syrup would.

At 319 calories in a Grande this is the lightest of the three cloud Frappuccinos, well below the caramel mocha at 418. Sugar is 37.2g out of 38.8g of carbohydrate, and fat is 16g with 10g saturated. Caffeine is 27.7mg in a Grande. Calories run 228 in a Tall and 337 in a Venti.

Brown sugar also behaves differently from caramel as the drink warms. Molasses keeps its character as the ice melts and the blend thins, where a caramel syrup tends to read as plain sugar once the texture goes. The practical effect is that this is the cloud Frappuccino that survives being left for ten minutes with the most of itself intact.

The cloud range is priced above the standard Frappuccinos at £6.90 against £5.60 for a Tall, which buys the foam rather than any more drink. Ordered without the foam it saves around 60 calories and loses most of the point of buying it. The Caramel Mocha Cloud Frappuccino is the richest of the three, and the Strawberry Matcha Cloud Frappuccino swaps the coffee base for matcha.