Starbucks Lavender Powder Recipe
A homemade stand-in for Starbucks' lavender powder: sugar ground with dried lavender, a little salt and freeze-dried blueberries for the colour.
- Total
- 10 min
- Serves
- 12
- Calories (est.)
- 35
Starbucks' lavender powder is sugar with salt, natural lavender flavour and colour from carrot and black currant juice, used in its lavender foam and lattes. A homemade stand-in grinds half a cup of sugar with a tablespoon of dried culinary lavender, a pinch of salt and freeze-dried blueberries for the colour, then sifts it. Two teaspoons flavour one drink.
What is in Starbucks' lavender powder
The ingredient statement of the Iced Lavender Cream Matcha lists the lavender powder as sugar, salt, natural lavender flavour, colour from carrot and black currant juice concentrate, and soybean oil. The purple comes from the juice concentrates, not from lavender flowers.
The powder below takes its flavour from the flower itself. It is a stand-in, not Starbucks' formula, and MakeFoodLovely is not connected with Starbucks.
Recipe
Lavender Powder
A homemade stand-in for Starbucks' lavender powder — sugar ground fine with dried culinary lavender, salt and freeze-dried blueberries for colour. About 1/2 cup, twelve servings of two teaspoons.
- Prep
- 10 min
- Total
- 10 min
- Serves
- 12
- Cuisine
- American
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1 tablespoon dried culinary lavender
- 1/4 ounce freeze-dried blueberries (about 1/4 cup)
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
Instructions
- Put the sugar, the lavender, the freeze-dried blueberries and the salt in a spice grinder or a small blender.
- Grind for 30 to 45 seconds, stopping once to shake the jar, until the mixture is a fine, pale purple powder.
- Sift the powder through a fine sieve into a bowl and throw away the coarse bits that stay behind.
- Keep the powder in a small airtight jar.
Nutrition
- Calories:
- 35
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.
Culinary lavender, ground and sifted
- Lavender sold for cooking. Lavender from a craft shop or a sachet is not meant to be eaten.
- Ground with the sugar. The sugar crystals help the blades break up the buds, which a grinder alone only tosses about.
- Sifted. Pieces of stem and husk stay in the sieve. Left in, they float on the drink.
- One tablespoon, not more. Lavender is strong, and the amount is deliberate.
The colour
Freeze-dried blueberries turn the powder pale purple. In milk the colour is a soft lilac, lighter than the purple of the Starbucks drinks. Without the blueberries the powder is off-white and works the same way.
For a stronger colour, 1/4 teaspoon of butterfly pea flower powder gives a blue-violet.
How to use lavender powder
- Hot drinks: stir 2 teaspoons into a latte or a cup of tea.
- Cold drinks: sugar dissolves slowly in cold milk. Stir the powder with 1 tablespoon of hot water first.
- Cold foam: froth 1/4 cup of cold heavy cream with 2 tablespoons of milk and 2 teaspoons of powder for 30 seconds. The lavender cold foam page covers the foam in detail.
- Matcha: the iced lavender matcha takes the foam on top.
For lavender in liquid form, to keep in the refrigerator, see the lavender creamer.
Keeping it dry
The powder keeps 3 months in an airtight jar away from light. It takes up moisture from the air and clumps; a fork, or a few seconds in the grinder, loosens it again.
Other powders for Starbucks drinks on this site are the matcha powder and the cherry powder.
Did you make this?
Let others know how it turned out.
