STARBUCKS SALTED CARAMEL MOCHA

Now I'm no fan of Starbucks' coffee, I'm a Nero girl myself (hark at me being all coffee connoisseur when I only starting drinking it a couple of years ago) but you've got to give it to them - they do seasonal drinks like no other. When I got an email shouting about the new Salted Caramel Mocha my eyes lit up like a glow worm in a cave. 

'Espresso and steamed milk, blended with mocha sauce and toffee nut flavoured syrup. Topped with sweetened whipped cream, caramel sauce and a mixture of turbinado sugar and sea salt', you say? 

I love salt. I love mocha. Surely I MUST LOVE THIS? So after spending much of today in a freezing cold studio I thought I'd tret (yes, 'tret') myself to a nice warm drink on the way home. 

Now I don't particularly like cream but seeing as the main point of this drink is the rock salt and caramel drizzle that perches on the whipped cream, I thought I ought to suck it up and have a little bit. So I got a "tall salted caramel mocha with skimmed milk. And just a little bit of cream." Such a palava ordering a drink in there, I always feel like I need to write it down and rehearse it first.

Didn't want to look like the type of loser who takes pictures of her coffee to blog it (OH HAI!) so I lovingly carried the drink home to take a picture there. And realised all the cream had melted. So it just looked like a regular coffee. Cool. So here's what Starbucks say it'll look like (when have you ever been given a coffee in a glass in there?!):

I'm sure it did look like that before the heat and walk got to it. With less cream, obvs. Look at all that salt! Deeeee-lish. I however, didn't get to experience the crunchy crunch of the salt crystals as they'd dissolved by the time I took my first sip, which I was kind of bummed about that seeing as I'm N16's biggest salt fiend. 

Despite weeping over spilt salt, the drink was still pretty damn good. The mocha sauce takes the overbearing nuttiness out of the toffee nut syrup and the dissolved salt can probably also take some credit for making the drink seem less sickly sweet and rich. Though I'm still glad I only got a small one. Give me a venti and I'll quite possibly hand it back to you with chunks of my vomit in it. Oh sorry, were you eating?

p.s. Kind of wish my name was Lissa.

Starbucks Salted Caramel Mocha, Tall, £2.95

MINCE PIE IN THE SKY: STARBUCKS

So I like to think I'm something of a mince pie connoisseur. I mean, I eat enough. And I am the daughter of a woman who makes amazing ones, so really, I'm an expert. I could do a degree in mince pie and probably do better in it than the one I did in English. So I've decided to review every pie that comes my way this festive season. As I have nothing better to do. God, I love pie.

Starbucks in Tunbridge Wells, £1.55 FREE
I won't lie, I don't even like Starbucks that much - ever since they took away the black cherry syrup two Christmases ago, I've been a Nero girl. However, their offer today of a free mince pie with any festive drink was too much temptation. (Though I discovered I don't particularly like any of their festive drinks. They're all a bit rich. And gross. Nice red cups though.)

The pastry was deeeeeee-lish and tasted pretty homemade. Any of you who ever worked as a wine girl at the Lucas World of Furniture would have compared the pastry to that of the buttery apple pies from Matozzas we used to scoff serve. This was a lovely deep pie, although there could have been slightly more mincemeat, and the mincemeat could have been slightly less bland, but what it lacked in these departments, it certainly made up for in presentation. What a pretty star, eh? And what delicately sifted icing sugar. The only thing that put me off was the grease eeking it's way through the paper bag but hey, I was consuming it with a big fat cup of coffee and lard so who was I to give a shit about calories?

Thank you Starbucks. That was nice.

4/5