Starbucks Caramel Cream Frappuccino Blended Beverage

The Starbucks Caramel Cream Frappuccino costs £5.80 for a Tall and carries 358 calories in a Grande with no caffeine at all. Caramel is blended with milk and ice, and no coffee goes anywhere near it.

The cream Frappuccinos exist for people who want the texture without the coffee, and this is the most ordered of them. Without Frappuccino Roast in the blend there is nothing bitter to balance the caramel, so it lands squarely as a milkshake and tastes noticeably sweeter than the coffee version despite carrying a similar amount of sugar. The caramel comes through as butterscotch rather than burnt sugar, and the whipped cream on top softens the first few mouthfuls.

Zero caffeine is the reason to choose it, and it makes this a rare cold drink on the Starbucks UK menu that suits children and late evenings. The trade shows in the other figures: 40.2g of sugar in a Grande out of 41.4g of carbohydrate, and 18.9g of fat with 13g saturated, which is nearly two thirds of the 20g daily reference intake. Calories run 270 in a Tall, 358 in a Grande and 405 in a Venti.

Its place on the menu is quietly useful for anyone ordering for a group with a child in it. Every other blended drink on the board carries at least some caffeine, and the cream Frappuccinos are the only ones that carry none at all. That makes them the safe answer when the alternative is explaining why a nine year old cannot have the thing everyone else is drinking.

No cream takes roughly 80 calories off and half the syrup another 10g of sugar, which between them make a real difference to a drink this rich. A Tall is the other sensible route at 270. The Caramel Frappuccino is the same flavour with coffee in it, and the Classic Hot Chocolate is the other caffeine free option when it is too cold for a blended drink.