How to Make a Caramel Macchiato at Home

A caramel macchiato is vanilla-sweetened steamed milk, marked with a shot of espresso poured through the foam and finished with a drizzle of caramel sauce. To make one, put a tablespoon of vanilla syrup in a mug, add about 180 ml of steamed, well-foamed milk, pour the espresso slowly through the middle of the foam, and drizzle caramel over the top.

Starbucks introduced it in 1996, and it has been on the menu ever since. Making it at home is easy once you know that the order of the layers is the recipe — and that the two sauces take about fifteen minutes between them.

The recipe

1. Put the vanilla syrup in a warmed mug.
2. Steam or froth the milk with more foam than you would for a latte, and pour it into the mug. The steaming guide covers the technique.
3. Pull the espresso and pour it slowly into the centre of the foam. It will sink through and settle as a darker band.
4. Drizzle the caramel over the foam in a crisscross.
5. Serve without stirring.

This is the method of Starbucks' own home recipe, which uses three-quarters of a cup of milk, a tablespoon of vanilla syrup, a shot of espresso poured through the foam and a caramel drizzle. For a stronger coffee taste, use a double shot.

Why it is called a macchiato

In Italian, macchiato means stained or marked. An Italian caffè macchiato is a shot of espresso marked with a spoonful of milk foam — a small, strong coffee. The caramel macchiato takes the idea the other way round: it is a large glass of milk marked by the espresso poured on top, which makes it a sweetened latte macchiato, not a macchiato at all. The macchiato guide explains the difference, and why the espresso settles into a band in the first place: espresso is less dense than milk, so it tends to stay above it rather than mixing straight in.

The layering is what changes from sip to sip. The first mouthfuls are caramel, foam and espresso; the last are sweet vanilla milk. Stir it and you have a vanilla latte with caramel.

The vanilla syrup

Starbucks' home version is a simple syrup: one cup of sugar and one cup of water brought to the boil with a split vanilla bean, simmered for five minutes, cooled and strained. If you use vanilla extract instead, the recipe calls for about a tablespoon and a half, stirred in after the syrup has simmered and cooled.

The proportions make the arithmetic easy. A cup of granulated sugar weighs about 200 g and a cup of water about 240 g, so the syrup is roughly 45% sugar by weight, a little more after simmering. A tablespoon of it weighs around 18–20 g and carries roughly 8–9 g of sugar — the sweetness in the drink.

The caramel sauce

Starbucks' home caramel sauce is half a cup of brown sugar, two tablespoons of butter, a quarter-cup of half-and-half and a pinch of salt, stirred over medium-low heat and simmered gently for ten minutes. It thickens as it cools and keeps for up to a week in the fridge.

What makes it taste of caramel is worth knowing, because it is not quite caramel. True caramelization is the breakdown of sugar by heat alone, and each sugar has its own threshold: sucrose — table sugar — begins at about 170 °C, while fructose starts at about 105 °C. A sauce full of water and cream cannot get close to 170 °C while it simmers. Its caramel flavour comes instead from brown sugar, whose remaining molasses carries the taste and speeds the browning reactions, and from the butter and cream, which add the rich, buttery notes you associate with caramel.

That also explains the drink's original design problem. According to Starbucks' account of the drink's creation, as reported by Mashed, the team led by Hannah Su spent nearly a year on the recipe, and the difficult part was a caramel sauce light enough to stay on top of the foam rather than sinking into the drink. A thick, cool sauce drizzled thinly sits on foam; a hot, runny one drops straight through. If yours sinks, let it cool and thicken before drizzling.

Sugar and caffeine

A caramel macchiato is a dessert-like drink, and the sugar adds up quickly.

• Vanilla syrup, 1 tablespoon: roughly 8–9 g of sugar.
• Caramel sauce, 1 tablespoon: roughly 10 g, since the sauce is mostly brown sugar.
• Milk, 180 ml of whole milk: about 9 g of lactose, natural milk sugar, and about 110 kcal.

That is roughly 18–20 g of free sugars in a homemade mug. The WHO recommends keeping free sugars below 10% of daily energy and suggests that going below 5% — about 25 g a day for an adult — brings further benefits. Sugars naturally present in milk are not counted, but the syrup and sauce are. One caramel macchiato can therefore use most of that lower target. Halving the syrup and keeping the drizzle thin is the easiest way to cut it.

Caffeine depends only on the espresso: at the USDA's average of 212 mg per 100 g, one 30 g shot holds about 64 mg and a double about 127 mg. The caffeine guide puts those in context.

Variations

• Iced caramel macchiato. Put the vanilla syrup and cold milk over ice, pour the espresso slowly over the top and finish with caramel. The espresso stays on top for a while before it mixes. The iced latte guide covers chilling espresso for milk drinks.
• Without an espresso machine. Starbucks' home recipe suggests about 60 ml of strong coffee from a moka pot. Froth the milk in a French press or a shaken jar.
• Less sweet. Use a teaspoon of vanilla syrup, or vanilla extract with no syrup at all, and keep the caramel for the top.

For the plain version of the same build, see the latte guide, and for every other drink on the menu, the types of coffee drinks guide.