I’ve been addicted to Starbucks iced green tea lattes, but what I’m not addicted to is the added sugar in a Starbucks iced green tea latte. Or the green tea latte Starbucks price!
If you’re like me and had been wondering how do you make a matcha latte at home, we made up a healthy copycat version of the Starbucks iced green tea latte.
Even when you ask for a Starbucks iced green tea latte without extra sugar, the pre-mixed matcha powder already has it in there. So the only way to make a healthy iced matcha tea latte is to make your own.
Paying almost $5 per drink when I can make it at home for under $1.00 for an iced matcha tea latte is definitely worth it to me.
I usually drink unsweetened almond milk, but you can just as easily substitute regular milk for this Starbucks iced green tea latte copycat recipe. My son’s favorite milk is soy, so you can definitely make an iced green tea latte with soy if that’s your favorite too!
Another reason to make your own Starbucks iced green tea latte, is that Starbucks only offers almond milk and soy milk with sugar in it. So the only way to completely make your iced matcha latte sugar free is to make your own ice green latte with soy milk or other types of milk at home that is unsweetened.
Starbucks Iced Green Tea Latte
You just need 3 ingredients for this amazing Starbucks iced green tea latte recipe:
☕unsweetened almond milk (soy, coconut or regular milk)
☕honey (agave works well or stevia to taste for a low carb/keto version )
When you think of green tea, you think of the little tea bags steeped in hot water. That’s not the kind of green tea Starbucks uses to make their Starbucks iced green tea lattes! And if you’re hoping to make a green tea latte recipe with tea bag, please just spring for the real stuff. You just can’t get the same taste if you use green tea bags for your matcha latte recipe.
Making an iced matcha green tea latte requires a special concentrated kind of finely ground green tea called matcha that gets mixed into your drink.
Matcha was life changing for me! Really! I drastically reduced my coffee consumption and switched to homemade healthy iced matcha tea lattes when I realized how easy they are to make and how many health benefits matcha contains.
Matcha is a special mild Japanese ceremonial green tea that’s been around for thousands of years. It’s caffeinated, but instead of making you jittery like coffee, you feel a “calm alertness” when drinking matcha tea. If you’d like more info on the matcha tea benefits, Time Magazine wrote an excellent article about it.
I’d gladly drink a homemade Starbucks iced green tea latte every day if I could!
You can buy matcha in packs like this at the grocery store, but I’ll admit, these single serve packets are more than I want to spend to make a copycat Starbucks iced green tea latte at home. At the time of writing this post, Trader Joes charges $6.99 for 7 packets. I just finished up my last box, and since this drink has become a favorite with Madi also, I’m buying larger quantities of matcha tea for much less on Amazon.
Instead of $1 per serving, how about .30 per serving (at time of writing this post) for organic matcha? It’s sold in small and large sizes, so the cost depends on which size you get!
My favorite way to blend drinks is with my blender single serve cups, a regular blender works too of course. If you don’t have a blender or don’t want to use a blender, BlenderBottles work really well. I’d recently purchased a different brand, and it did NOT mix my matcha at all!
Mixing green tea into a cold beverage doesn’t blend easily, the blender cups and blender bottles are the only methods I’ve found so far that prevent lots of little tea bits from floating around your drink. I have to admit that’s one thing that’ super annoying about the Starbucks iced green tea latte you buy~ their matcha powder is never mixed in and mostly just sits at the bottom of the cup.
If you don’t have either of these to make your Starbucks iced green tea latte, you can mix the tea with HOT milk and then let it cool before pouring over ice instead.
Step 1: Add 1 packet of matcha tea, 1 T honey (or stevia for low carb/keto) and 12 oz of unsweetened almond milk or regular milk to your cup.
Step 2: Blend until all ingredients are well combined, whether that be with a blender or BlenderBottle.
I love that when using a blender it makes the drink foamy!
I poured the cold green tea beverage over ice in a Starbucks mug I conveniently had on hand. This is not a hot matcha tea recipe but you, of course, could make one if you prefer a hot matcha latte recipe instead of iced.
How Does Starbucks Make Iced Green Tea Latte?
Starbucks makes their popular ice green tea matcha latte by blending milk with a pre-sweetened matcha tea powder. Unless you specify otherwise, your Starbucks iced green tea latte will also come with extra added sugar.
The Starbucks barista shakes the pre-mixed matcha tea powder with the milk and extra sweetener.
If you don’t want regular milk, you can also request that your Starbucks iced green tea latte be made with almond milk, soy milk or coconut milk. You can also request that they leave out the extra added sugar if you want to keep this as sugar free and low carb as possible.
Starbucks includes the ingredients and nutritional information for their iced matcha tea latte on their website if you want to know how many calories, carbs and fat are in your Starbucks iced green tea latte.
And the Caffeine Informer has a great post about the caffeine content of all Starbucks drinks, including their green tea latte if you want to know how a green tea latte stacks up to espresso and coffee.
Matcha Latte Art
I found this fun matcha latte art video I wanted to share! Making fun latte art is something I’d love to learn how to do and this Youtube video on matcha latte art has terrific ideas. While this doesn’t really work for your Starbucks iced green tea latte, my hunch is you’ll want to make this hot now and then too.
Enjoy your new favorite homemade Starbucks iced green tea latte recipe!! You’re welcome 😉
Hello, if I am using bulk matcha, how much would be equal to a Trader Joes packet?I looked at these in the store and wouldn’t buy them because they were so expensive. Bought bulk organic on eBay. Thank you!
Forgot to add- I would like to make the cold latte and wonder about the amounts using stevia. If that isn’t good, I would consider using agave. But don’t want to use sugar