Starbucks Iced Caramelised Banana Oat Shaken Espresso

The Starbucks Iced Caramelised Banana Oat Shaken Espresso costs £6.35 for a Tall and carries 157 calories in a Grande. Blonde espresso is shaken with caramelised banana sauce and ice, then finished with a splash of oat drink.

Banana and coffee is a less obvious pairing than caramel, and it only works because of the roast underneath. Blonde espresso is light and slightly citrus, which leaves room for the fruit; a dark roast would bury it. The sauce is caramelised rather than fresh, so it reads as banoffee or baked banana rather than smoothie, and the oat drink on top adds a cereal note that sits closer to the fruit than dairy would.

Sugar is 17.7g in a Grande out of 23.4g of carbohydrate, which is 3.4g more than the brown sugar version. Calories run 118 in a Tall, 157 in a Grande and 197 in a Venti. Caffeine steps at every size, from 85.5mg in a Tall to 128.2mg in a Grande and 171mg in a Venti, since each size takes another Blonde ristretto shot.

Oat drink rather than milk is a deliberate choice and not only a dairy free one. Oat carries a cereal sweetness of its own that sits alongside caramelised banana instead of covering it, and it is thin enough to float as a visible layer rather than mixing straight in. Dairy would do neither. The same logic runs through the brown sugar version, where oat matches the molasses in the syrup.

It is a seasonal drink rather than a fixture, which means stores drop it when the sauce runs out at the end of a promotional run. Drink it fast for the same reason as any shaken espresso: the foam built by the shake settles within about five minutes. The Iced Brown Sugar Oat Shaken Espresso is the year round version with less sugar, and the Caramelised Banana Velvet Latte is the hot drink built on the same sauce.