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Store-bought flavored syrups are full of chemicals and expensive. But you can make homemade vanilla syrup for your coffee drinks and desserts for less. It’s another great homemade flavoring you can make yourself for better health.

homemade vanilla syrup being poured into coffee

Homemade vanilla syrup can be used in fancy coffee drinks like you get at Starbucks such as caramel macchiato, vanilla Frappuccino, cappuccino, and iced coffee drinks. We love making this Homemade Honey Lavender Latte with ours too. You can also use it to soak cakes for moisture before you ice them, add flavor to other cocktails and alcohol drinks, and more.

Once you learn to make flavored syrups, you’ll be using them for flavoring all kinds of things. It’s wonderful to make your own healthier and less expensive versions of all kinds of flavorings. This vanilla syrup is a wonderful flavoring as well. (You can even make the vanilla homemade)

Vanilla syrup is simple to make and doesn’t take much time. We use raw sugar instead of white sugar at our house for more nutritional value and a less processed product. We try to avoid white sugar in our diet, so our recipes call for raw sugar. If you usually use white sugar in your recipes, you can substitute it in equal amounts.

Vanilla syrup for coffee

There are a ton of fun coffee drinks that use vanilla syrup for flavoring. We like to make a vanilla Frappuccino drink with coffee, milk, and homemade vanilla syrup. Sometimes we add chocolate too, it’s delicious with both.

A Frappuccino is a cold blended coffee drink that is made with either coffee or a crème base like ice cream. You can buy Starbucks syrup but it’s over $25. We just make our copycat version and store it in a mason jar in the fridge until we need some.

Starbucks vanilla syrup

You’re going to save tons of money making your own coffee drinks at home. If you visit Starbucks daily, you’re spending a ton on your fun drinks. You can get a milk frother, espresso machine, French coffee press, or whatever you need to recreate the coffee drinks you like at home. And it’s a fun hobby.

Starbucks has its own brand of vanilla syrup as well as chocolate and caramel. They add them by the pump to the coffee drinks they serve. Panera bread makes coffee drinks with another brand of vanilla syrup called Torani.

Torani vanilla syrup recipe

The flavor of Torani vanilla syrup is rated higher than Starbucks vanilla syrup in flavor. I like them both. But Panera bread and McDonald’s both use Torani, so that tells you people like it because those are both popular places to get coffee drinks. Of course, Starbucks is king.

There are many types of coffee drinks, the blond vanilla latte with frothed milk and vanilla syrup is used in a shot of expresso. The caramel macchiato is made with frothy milk, espresso, caramel sauce, and vanilla syrup. The cappuccino is espresso with frothed hot milk or cream and has a cinnamon flavor.

Then iced coffee is chilled coffee, either cold brewed or hot brewed and cooling down (but they have a different flavor) and then flavored with vanilla or another flavored syrup. Frappuccino is ice and cream with flavored syrup such as vanilla syrup, blended up and topped with whipped cream. So, there are a variety of coffee drinks that can use homemade vanilla syrup.

pan of water with vanilla beans and raw sugar pouring in to make homemade vanilla syrup for coffee drinks and more.

Homemade vanilla bean coffee syrup could not be simpler to make. Just take water and syrup and combine them. Throw in a split vanilla bean and heat up the water until the sugar is dissolved. Don’t boil it, just stir it and it if comes to a boil, remove from heat.

jar of homemada vanilla syrup on the counter

Once the sugar is completely dissolved, and the syrup is off the heat, remove the vanilla bean and add vanilla. Let it cool and store in the fridge for a week or two.

For more vanilla ideas, check this out:

Homemade vanilla coffee syrup

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