Copycat Starbucks Cherry Cold Foam Recipe

Cherry cold foam is cold cream, milk and syrup frothed until it pours thick and floats on an iced drink. For two drinks: a quarter cup of heavy cream, two tablespoons of 2% milk, a tablespoon of cherry syrup and a teaspoon of vanilla syrup, thirty seconds with a handheld frother. Starbucks served it on the Iced Cherry Chai in spring 2025; this is a reconstruction.

What Starbucks' cherry cream cold foam was

Starbucks introduced it on 4 March 2025 with the Iced Cherry Chai, which its announcement describes as an Iced Chai Latte "finished with cherry cream cold foam and a sprinkle of cherry crunch topping". The same announcement offered the foam on its own, as an add-on for almost any drink, for a limited time that spring.

The drink is no longer on the menu, but Starbucks' other flavoured foams show the pattern. The ingredient list of the Salted Caramel Cream Cold Brew gives its foam as vanilla sweet cream — cream, milk and vanilla syrup — plus caramel syrup and salt. The recipe here follows that pattern with cherry syrup. It is a reconstruction, and MakeFoodLovely is not connected with Starbucks.

Recipe

Starbucks Cherry Cold Foam

A reconstruction of Starbucks' cherry cream cold foam — heavy cream, 2% milk, cherry syrup and vanilla syrup, frothed cold. Enough to top two 16-ounce drinks.

5.0 (1)Print

Prep

5 min

Total

5 min

Serves

2

Cuisine

American

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup heavy cream, cold
• 2 tablespoons 2% milk, cold
• 1 tablespoon cherry syrup
• 1 teaspoon vanilla syrup
• 1 tablespoon freeze-dried cherries, crushed

Instructions

1. Pour the cream, milk, cherry syrup and vanilla syrup into a tall, narrow cup. Everything should come straight from the refrigerator; cold cream holds air and warm cream does not.
2. Froth with a handheld milk frother for 20 to 30 seconds, moving it up and down, until the mixture has thickened into a pourable foam. Stop before it stiffens into whipped cream.
3. Pour it slowly over an iced drink so it floats, and scatter the crushed freeze-dried cherries on top.

Nutrition

Calories:

145

Calculated from the ingredient quantities above using the USDA FoodData Central database, then divided by the number of servings. It is an estimate and will vary with the exact products you use.

Getting the cherry cold foam to float

• Cream to milk, two to one. Cream alone whips stiff and sits on the drink in a lump; milk alone froths and collapses. The mixture stays pourable.
• Cold. Cream holds air because its fat is firm when cold. Use it straight from the refrigerator.
• Syrup before frothing. Syrup is heavier than foam; stirred in afterwards, it sinks to the bottom of the cup.
• A handheld frother is enough for this quantity. A French press works too: pump the plunger up and down for about thirty seconds. A full-size blender needs more liquid than six tablespoons to reach its blades.

Cherry syrup: bottled or from scratch

Bottled cherry syrup from a coffee-syrup brand such as Torani or Monin is the direct route. A reviewer of the Starbucks drink described its cherry flavour as the kind found in a baked good, sweet and without any sourness: a sweet syrup, not a tart one.

To make one, simmer half a cup of tart cherry juice with half a cup of sugar for five minutes, until the sugar has dissolved, then cool it. That gives about two-thirds of a cup, enough for ten batches of foam, and it keeps two weeks in the refrigerator. It carries the tartness of the juice. The cherry powder on this site is a third option: two teaspoons in place of the cherry syrup, with the vanilla syrup raised to a tablespoon.

The Iced Cherry Chai, rebuilt

Starbucks lists its Iced Chai Latte as ice, milk, chai tea concentrate and classic syrup. At home, fill a 16-ounce glass with ice, add half a cup of chai concentrate and half a cup of milk, stir, and top with half the foam and half the crushed cherries.

Check the carton: a sweetened concentrate needs nothing more, an unsweetened one takes a teaspoon of sugar in the glass. The freeze-dried cherries stand in for the "cherry crunch topping" of the original.

Other drinks it goes on

Starbucks offered the foam on almost any drink. At home it suits anything iced that is not already sweet: cold brew, an iced americano, an iced matcha. The strawberry cold foam and the lavender cold foam are the same method with a different flavour, and the cold foam creamer is a make-ahead version.