Festive Coffee Shop Faves at Home

What signals the official start of the festive season for you? Is it the Christmas lights being switched on by two members of your favourite 90s band in your hometown? Is it the first time you’re reduced to tears by a Christmas advert? Or is it the arrival of the #ChristmasCups in your nearest coffee shop?

The launch of the festive menu in popular coffee shop chains is a highlight of the year for many, with hot chocolates, mochas and lattes spiced up with cinnamon, gingerbread and salted caramel the true taste of Christmas for them.

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This year, Wren Kitchens decided to carry out an analysis to find out just how much sugar is in these festive favourites, finding that some contain as much sugar as three-and-a-half Mars bars – in one drink! Wouldn’t you rather just eat three-and-a-half Mars bars?! That might make you feel a little sick, so you’d probably stop after two – three at a push. But that’s what you could be consuming each time you order a Christmas coffee.

Is that worth it though, just for your #ChristmasCup Insta picture? Probably not. But this doesn’t mean you have to miss out on the festive hot drink fun altogether. You could make your own at home without having to wait in a loooong queue and with significantly less sugar, meaning you could still enjoy that Mars bar (just one, not three-and-a-half) afterwards without feeling too guilty. Here’s how:

Gingery milky coffee is the taste of December to fans of sickly sweet hot drinks. Gingerbread lattes have been #ChristmasCup staples for several years now and they typically involve frothy coffee infused with gingerbread-flavoured syrup, topped with whipped cream and maybe even an actual gingerbread man.

If you’ve got a coffee machine at home and want to replicate the coffee shop froth for yourself, go ahead – but if you’re keeping it real with a classic kettle, this doesn’t mean you have to miss out on the gingerbread latte action. Make yourself a standard cup of coffee – bonus points for using a Christmas-themed mug – leaving more room at the top for milk than you normally would. Fill the space with skimmed milk (or semi-skimmed if you can’t cope with the red top kind, you’ll still be saving calories) and that’s your latte sorted.

You could leave it here bar crumbling a ginger biscuit on top, but if you want a little more indulgence – it is Christmas, after all – add some syrup and a squirt of whipped cream, making it the low-fat kind if possible. Stick a mini gingerbread man in the top or a standard ginger biccie, and voila!

Dunking a biscuit in a cup of tea is one of life’s greatest pleasures, which means eating a biscuit off a steaming mug of hot chocolate is most definitely up there with one of the best experiences imaginable.

With biscuit, salted (optional) caramel and melted chocolate, a slice of millionaire’s shortbread is incredibly indulgent, making it a firm festive favourite in hot chocolate form on many coffee shop menus. But it’s no surprise that these are laden with sugar, although they don’t have to be if you make your own.

Use a sachet or a couple of spoonfuls of light instant hot chocolate powder, making it up with boiling water or skimmed milk to keep the calories low. Add a little caramel syrup and stir well so that you don’t end up with a sticky clump at the bottom of your mug – there’s nothing festive about a sticky clump.

Next, add a small sprinkle of sea salt flakes for that gorgeous salted caramel taste (obviously skip this step if you’d rather have a classic millionaire’s shortbread-inspired drink rather than the salted caramel kind).

Finally, place a buttery shortbread finger in your mug. Use it a little like a spoon to scoop the hot chocolate into your mouth, or treat it like you would a digestive in your brew. The shortbread will soak up all of that yummy salted caramel hot chocolate so every time you take a bite it’ll taste just like a slice of cake. But it’s really a hot drink. Get your head around that.

Cinnamon and nutmeg are key mulled wine ingredients, but it’s frowned upon to have mulled wine for breakfast. We know, it’s a shame.

However, there’s nothing stopping you from recreating the flavours of mulled wine in your morning coffee, adding a sprinkle of these festive spices to your mug. Extra festive points if you make a mocha rather than your usual standard coffee – Christmas is all about chocolate, after all.

You could make your morning drink even more mulled wine-like by topping your breakfast porridge with slices of clementine and a few cranberries, as well as extra cinnamon and nutmeg. With a little creativity, mulled wine for breakfast is perfectly acceptable.

Yes, we’ve already given you a recipe for a salted caramel millionaire’s shortbread-inspired hot chocolate, which is pretty epic in itself, but the classics are always the biggest hits at Christmas time – that’s why Band Aid 30, despite that brilliant bit from Seal, will never be as good as the original.

It’s also why we’re instructing you to make this ultimate luxury hot chocolate with candy cane spoon. Because scooping out thick, chocolatey goodness with a candy cane is the only thing better than simply drinking it.

Make up your favourite hot chocolate – use a light powder if you want to watch your weight, they do still taste excellent! – and then drop in your favourite chocolate while it’s still piping hot. This could be a strawberry Quality Street, it could be a white chocolate Lindt ball, it could simply be a few Cadbury chocolate buttons. Stir with your candy cane until the chocolate melts into a gorgeously gooey and thick chocolatey delight.

Top with squirty cream, marshmallows, crumble a biscuit on top, add sprinkles – extra points for red and green ones – use edible glitter.

Then all that’s left to do is close your eyes, drink in that decadent Christmas hot chocolate and bask in its gloriousness, and the thought of how much money you’ve saved by making it at home. Even better, you can drink it in your pyjamas in front of Elf – you can’t do that in Starbucks, can you?

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