Pumpkin Spice Latte: How to Make One With Real Pumpkin and Spices

A pumpkin spice latte is a latte flavoured with the spices of pumpkin pie — cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves — and usually sweetened. To make one at home, heat 180 ml of milk with two tablespoons of pumpkin purée, a tablespoon of maple syrup and a quarter-teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice, whisking until it steams, then froth it and pour it over a double espresso.

Real pumpkin is optional, which surprises people. The flavour everyone recognises as "pumpkin spice" is the spice, not the squash.

The recipe

1. Heat the milk with the pumpkin, syrup and spice in a small pan, whisking, until it steams — about 60–65 °C. Do not let it boil.
2. Stir in the vanilla off the heat.
3. Strain it through a fine sieve if you want a perfectly smooth drink, then froth with a handheld frother or by pumping it in a French press.
4. Pull a double espresso into a warmed mug. The latte guide covers the shot and the proportions.
5. Pour the milk over the espresso, and top with whipped cream and a pinch of spice if you like.

Why the spices go into the milk

Ground spices do not dissolve. Stirred into a finished latte, they float, clump and then settle as grit at the bottom of the cup. Heating them in the milk, and ideally straining, does two things: the warm milk draws out their flavour, and the sieve removes the woody particles. Whisking the pumpkin in at the same time breaks it up so it thickens the milk evenly.

A homemade spice blend

Pumpkin pie spice is easy to mix yourself. A simple blend is 3 parts ground cinnamon, 1 part ground ginger, 1 part ground nutmeg and half a part ground cloves or allspice. Fresh spices make a difference: ground spices lose aroma as they age, and a jar of nutmeg that has been open for years will taste of very little.

What "pumpkin spice" actually is

Pumpkin pie has a long history in America, and from the 1930s spice companies began selling ready-mixed pumpkin pie spice. The flavour drinks call "pumpkin spice" is that blend.

Commercial flavourings take a shortcut. As the food scientist Kantha Shelke explains in a video for the Institute of Food Technologists, reported by NPR in 2014, flavour companies build pumpkin spice from a handful of the aroma compounds found in pumpkin, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg rather than from the spices themselves. Instead of nutmeg, they use a compound called sabinene; instead of cloves, eugenol. A small selection of compounds is enough for the brain to fill in the rest and think "pumpkin pie". According to Shelke, this simplified recipe captures the essence of pumpkin pie better than the natural spices from a cupboard, which would make something closer to Indian spiced tea — masala chai.

That is why a homemade pumpkin spice latte made with real spices tastes warmer and more complex than the café version, and more like chai. It is also why real pumpkin is optional: the squash contributes body, colour and a faint earthy sweetness, but very little of the flavour people associate with the drink.

How the PSL began

Who first put pumpkin spice in a latte is unknown. Small American coffee shops were selling pumpkin spice lattes in the 1990s; in 1995 the singer Tori Amos told a Seattle audience she preferred her own homemade brew "that tastes like pumpkin pie".

The version that made the drink famous came from Starbucks. In January 2003, following the success of its peppermint mocha and eggnog latte, the company began developing a new autumn drink. Its team, which included Peter Dukes, worked up four candidates — a chocolate drink, a caramel one, a cinnamon one and a pumpkin latte — and although the pumpkin idea drew mixed reactions at first, the team pushed for it, sampling pumpkin pie with espresso to refine the recipe. In late 2003 it was tested in stores in Vancouver and Washington, DC, where sales beat expectations, and in 2004 it went to all US stores.

For its first twelve years the Starbucks drink contained no pumpkin. In August 2015 the company changed the recipe to include pumpkin purée and remove artificial colours; the Institute of Food Technologists judged the change largely imperceptible to customers. Starbucks registered "PSL" as a trademark the same year. By 2019, CNBC reported, it had sold around 424 million pumpkin spice lattes worldwide.

A note on cinnamon

Most supermarket cinnamon is cassia, which contains coumarin, a natural flavour compound that in especially sensitive people can cause liver damage, usually reversible — although the BfR, Germany's Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, notes that no cases of liver damage from eating cinnamon have been described in the scientific literature. The BfR puts the tolerable daily intake at 0.1 mg of coumarin per kilogram of body weight — 6 mg for a 60 kg adult — and says cassia contains about 3 g of coumarin per kilogram on average, with the highest samples reaching 10 g.

Run the numbers for one latte. A quarter-teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice weighs about 0.4 g; even if all of it were cassia, it would carry about 1.3 mg of coumarin, around a fifth of that adult allowance. A full teaspoon of cassia, about 2.6 g, would carry nearly 8 mg — more than the whole day's amount. The BfR's advice is moderation, and for people who eat a lot of cinnamon, Ceylon cinnamon, which contains very little coumarin.

Calories and caffeine

Pumpkin itself is the lightest part of the drink. The USDA lists canned pumpkin at 34 kcal per 100 g, so two tablespoons — about 30 g — add only about 10 kcal, along with roughly 230 µg of vitamin A, mostly as beta-carotene, which is what makes the purée orange.

The rest of the calories come from the milk and sweetener. With 180 ml of whole milk (about 110 kcal at the USDA's 61 kcal per 100 g) and a tablespoon of maple syrup (about 52 kcal and 12 g of sugar), the homemade version comes to roughly 175 kcal before any whipped cream.

The caffeine is all in the espresso: about 76 mg for a 36 g double at the USDA's average of 212 mg per 100 g. The caffeine guide compares other drinks.

Variations

• Iced. Whisk the pumpkin, spice and syrup into a splash of warm milk so the syrup dissolves, then add cold milk, ice and the espresso. Cold drinks taste less sweet, as the iced latte guide explains.
• Batch syrup. Simmer 200 g of sugar, 200 ml of water, 120 g of pumpkin purée and 2 teaspoons of spice for ten minutes, strain, and keep it in the fridge for up to a week. The coffee syrups guide explains why homemade syrups need refrigerating.
• Dairy-free. Barista oat milk works well with the spices; the plant milk guide explains how to keep it from curdling.
• Without a machine. Use 60–80 ml of strong moka pot coffee in place of the espresso.