FTC Disclosure: Delicious Obsessions may receive comissions from purchases made through links in this article. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.Read our full terms and conditions here.

Today I am sharing 45 real food Starbucks® drink recipes! Now you can enjoy your favorite Starbucks® beverage in the comfort of your own home. Plus, you can avoid all the added sugar, flavorings, and other additives and focus on using only real food ingredients. Today is the day you turn your kitchen into your own personal coffee shop.

If you’ve been reading this site for any amount of time, you may have stumbled across posts where I talk about how I used to be a regular Starbucks® “addict”. I went through a period of life when I was making a trip down the street to the Starbucks® near my office at least once a day. But there *may* have been occasions where I went more than once…

Ahem…

Giving Up Coffee For Good

In 2012, I decided to get serious about my health and my inflammatory autoimmune conditions. At that time, I really dove head first into natural healing and was trying everything under the sun to support and heal my body. I made a lot of changes to my nutrition (some good, some not so good). In addition, also started focusing on things like sleep, skin/body care, and home care products. Being the gung-ho person I am, I was determined to do everything perfectly and squeaky “clean” (more on this in a future post).

One of the things that I also gave up was coffee.

Ahh, my beloved coffee. 🙁 It was so sad to break up with you, but I know now (5+ years later )that it was the right decision. I’ve tried to add you back into my diet with no success (cue migraines and misery).

For me, drinking coffee was never about the caffeine. I didn’t need it to “get me going” in the morning. For me, it was more about the ritual and experience. The taste and sensation. The way a steaming mug of coffee with heavy cream made me feel.

Coffee was comforting and soothing to me, especially during a time in my life that felt out of control and chaotic. During the height of my Starbucks® patronage, I was working a job I wasn’t happy in and it led to pretty major swings of anxiety and depression.

A rich, creamy cuppa joe was always a comfort to me. Yes, I was emotionally eating, er, drinking, but that’s OK. At the time, that is exactly what I needed to cope with all the internal chaos I was feeling inside. I’ve got a post all about emotional eating in the works…more on that soon.

So, back to 2012. I gave up coffee (and caffeine, which I talk about in this post) and tried to switch to herbal tea. Yeah, herbal tea just didn’t cut it. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE tea. I drink it daily. But at the time, tea was just not going to take the place of my beloved coffee.

One day I was at the store and saw Pero on the shelf. You may or may not be familiar with Pero (you can check it out on Amazon here), but it’s a coffee substitute and my mom used to buy it when I was little. I remember fondly enjoying cups of Pero with milk growing up so I thought maybe that was the solution.

But after reading the ingredients, I realized I couldn’t drink it because it contained gluten (which was off limits for me due to the impact gluten has on my antibody levels). Back to square one.

I started checking out all of the available coffee substitutes and only found a couple that were certified gluten-free. They tasted decent, but nothing like the cup of coffee I was longing for.

Sad…

Herbs to the Rescue

One of my friends then told me about herbs that could be used as coffee replacements and I got busy in the kitchen playing with different ratios, different herbs, different brewing methods. I finally created a blend that gave me my coffee “fix”, not only in flavor but experience as well.

And that started a whole new love affair…herbs to the rescue! 🙂

Some of you may know that I sold these handcrafted blends for about a year on Etsy. Turns out I was not the only person who had to give up coffee for whatever reason. There were A LOT of people out there who had the same passionate love affair with coffee as me!

After coming to a crossroads with that business (which you can read about here), I decided that I wanted to turn my coffee blends into a DIY Guide that people across the world could use to soothe their coffee cravings. That’s how my DIY Herbal Coffees eBook: A Complete Guide To Making Delicious Herbal Coffees to Support Healing & Stress Relief was born.

After I figured out how to make a good cuppa “joe” using herbs, I started experimenting with different ingredients, trying to replicate my favorite Starbucks® drinks. I figured there had to be a way to healthify my favorite beverages using ingredients that I could actually eat. I share a ton of those coffee shop recipes in my DIY Herbal Coffees eBook: A Complete Guide To Making Delicious Herbal Coffees to Support Healing & Stress Relief ebook, as well as on this site.

I know for a fact that I am not the only person who has struggled with giving up coffee (or any other loved food). Whatever the reason is that you’ve had to give up that food, there is almost always a way to re-create it using real food ingredients. That’s why I thought it would be super fun to share with you 45 real food Starbucks® drink recipes, including some of my very favorites!

If you can tolerate coffee, then these recipes won’t require any subs. But if you’re like me and coffee is a no-go, you can still enjoy the drinks from the Coffee Lattes & Frappes section, just sub in my herbal coffee blends, or any coffee substitute of your choice. 

45 Real Food Starbucks® Drink Recipes

45 Real Food Starbucks® Drink Recipes + My Love Affair with Coffee

I asked some of my favorite bloggers to share their recipes for copycat Starbucks® recipes and was blown away by how many I got! Turns out I’m not the only one in need of recreating coffee shop favorites in the comfort of our own home. But, before we dive into all of those, I wanted to share 4 of my favorite recipes that were all inspired by my love of Starbucks®.

If you want some more delicious baked goods to go with your coffee, try these (all gluten free, grain free, and/or dairy free):

And now, let’s dive into 45 real food Starbucks® drink recipes!

Coffee Lattes & Frappes

Tea Lattes & Frappes

Hot Chocolates & Other Frappes

Want to Make Your Own Gourmet Herbal Coffee Blends & Support Your Stress Response, Adrenals, Thyroid, and Whole Body Through Herbs?

When it comes to supporting overall wellness, herbs are a great tool to have in your toolkit, especially those who may be dealing with chronic illness of some type. Since 2009, when I started this site, I have met thousands upon thousands of people through my work and by far, the #1 health complaints are:

Because of this, I wanted to add in a section into this post about the benefit of using herbs with chronic illness. Adaptogens are by far one of the most used herbs when it comes to working with people who have low energy, fatigue, and overall imbalance in the endocrine system (thyroid, adrenals, and blood sugar).

While the benefits of adaptogenic herbs extend far beyond just supporting that one system, this tends to be one of the main reasons people turn to adaptogenic herbs in the first place. That said there are a lot of other herbs out there that offer amazing support for the body, especially those dealing with chronic illness which is why I wanted to share this section today.

Why Caffeine May Not Work for You (at least right now)

If you are dealing with any type of chronic illness, I’m sorry to break it to you, but caffeine may not be your best friend. 🙁 While you can find lots of info online in both the pro- and the anti-coffee camps, the fact of the matter comes down to the fact that are a lot of people dealing with chronic illness, especially thyroid and adrenal problems, that simply cannot tolerate coffee and caffeine.

While those with sluggish adrenal glands tend to feel run down and in need of a regular pick-me-up (like coffee and other caffeinated beverages), in the long run, caffeine can do more harm than good while you are healing. I go into the “whys” around caffeine and your adrenals in this detailed post here. In addition to the caffeine, there are other constituents, molds, and mycotoxins that can show up in coffee that some people find they react to and can further exacerbate the toxic load on the body.

As you know from my story at the top of this post, I had to give up coffee in 2012 and was left feeling like nothing else I tried could take its place. Necessity is the mother of invention so that is why I created my own coffee substitutes. They were made with organic, sustainably harvested herbs with zero grains, zero gluten, and zero caffeine. Just herbs.

Herbs that not only tasted delicious but supported my body’s function, like liver detox, bile production, digestion, etc. All of the herbs used in my “coffee” blends have been used for thousands of years to support the body’s normal functions and help everything work a little better — something we all need in today’s toxic world! (psst, dandelion is one of the herbs!)

When it came to creating these blends, if I could get something to not only tasted amazing (and helped me recreate my dearly loved ritual), but also did amazingly supportive things for my body, then it’s a no-brainer!

How my DIY Herbal Coffee Guide Was Born

I sold these pre-made blends on Etsy for a while and the demand was more than I could keep up with. People literally LOVED these blends and were stunned at how much like coffee they actually tasted. Customers who had been dealing with a variety of chronic illnesses had given up coffee to heal their bodies, but like me were deeply missing their morning cup of joe ritual.

After careful consideration and work with some highly experienced advisors, I decided to stop selling the pre-made blends and instead share my proprietary recipes in the form of an eBook. That way I could arm people with the knowledge and recipes they needed to make their own caffeine-free, gluten-free, grain-free blends in the comfort of their own home. 

That is why I created the best-selling DIY Herbal Coffees eBook: A Complete Guide To Making Delicious Herbal Coffees to Support Healing & Stress Relief.

Now in its second edition, this ebook features:

  • All of my proprietary herbal blend recipes to you can craft a homemade herbal cup of “coffee” at home.
  • A ton of researched information about coffee’s impact on the health of those dealing with issues like adrenal fatigue, blood sugar dysregulation, autoimmune disease, thyroid disease, and any other chronic illness.
  • Information about all of the herbs used, why I selected them, how to source them, how to prepare and store you “coffees”, and much more.
  • Access to your own personal coffee shop where I show you how to recreate your favorite coffee shop drinks and pastries with wholesome, nourishing real food ingredients. No junk here. Only real food.

This book truly is a comprehensive guide to supporting your health, reducing your stress, and bringing a little something special back into your healing journey. You can learn more and download your own copy of this revolutionary wellness guide here, or simply click on the image below.

real food Starbucks® drink recipes

Ultimate Healthy Living Bundle 2015 // deliciousobsessions.com

 

 

Delicious Obsessions is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.Read our full terms and conditions here.