Pink Drink with Cold Foam {Starbucks Copycat}

The Starbucks Pink Drink is delicious as is, but have you tried the Pink Drink with Cold Foam? This easy copycat recipe shows you how to make the popular Starbucks drink at home!

Jump to:

• 🗒 Ingredients
• 🍓 How to make a homemade strawberry acai base
• 🩷 How to make Pink Drink
• 🥛 How to make homemade cold foam
• 🎉 Variations on recipe
• 🧋 More Starbucks Cold Foam drink copycat recipes
• 📖 Recipe
• 💬 Comments

It started as a customer invention and now it's one of the most popular drinks on the official Starbucks' menu. And though it's perfection as is, fans are still giving the Pink Drink all kinds of upgrades when they can.

One upgrade that's sticking is the addition of cold foam. When the Pink Drink was first added to the Starbucks menu, cold foam wasn't even a thing. But Vanilla cold foam and the flavors of strawberry acai go so well together, so today the Pink Drink with Cold Foam is an incredibly popular drink!

Luckily, it's easy to make at home, too. All you need is my simple homemade. Pink Drink recipe (which I first created in 2016!) and my homemade Vanilla Cold Foam recipe. I put them both together in this post to make everything super easy for you.

🗒 Ingredients

The Pink Drink with cold foam is easy to make, but does require a few steps. First you'll make the Strawberry Acai base. Then you'll mix it with coconut milk and freeze-dried strawberries to turn it into the Pink Drink. Lastly, you'll whip up an easy-to-make cold foam to top the drink off.

Here's everything you need for each element of the drink, but be sure to view the recipe card at the bottom of this post for ingredient amounts and full recipe instructions:

Pink Drink with Cold Foam ingredients:

• Strawberry Acai Base: ingredients listed below
• Sweetened coconut milk: the kind in the carton
• Freeze-dried strawberries
• Vanilla Cold Foam: ingredients listed below

Strawberry Acai Base ingredients:

• White grape juice: I use Welch's
• Hulled and sliced strawberries
• Acai powder
• Green coffee extract powder: you can skip this if you don't want caffeine in your drink as it won't effect the flavor
• Passionfruit powder
• Lemon juice

If you don't have acai powder or passion fruit powder, this drink will still be delicious. In my opinion, both powders add some depth of flavor and make it closer to the original, but you can still make a pretty tasty drink without them.

Vanilla Cold Foam ingredients:

• 2% milk
• Heavy cream
• Vanilla syrup: you can either use store-bought or make your own with my vanilla syrup recipe.

🍓 How to make a homemade strawberry acai base

I recommend starting by making the strawberry acai base for the Pink Drink.

You'll find lots of different recipes for making the Strawberry Acai Refresher (which is the base for the Pink Drink) on the Internet, but I tested this one extensively and find it to be the closest tasting to the actual Starbucks one.

If you're looking for shortcuts, you can see my ideas for modifications for making the base.

To start, combine the white grape juice and sliced strawberries in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil.

Once boiling, lower heat to a simmer and let mixture simmer for 10 minutes, until strawberries are breaking down.

Remove the saucepan from the heat and strain mixture through a fine mesh sieve into a heatproof bowl.

Press down on strawberries with a wooden spoon to extract as much liquid as possible. Discard strawberries (you can use them for another purpose, like topping ice cream!).

Pour mixture back into saucepan and return to low heat. Stir in acai powder, green coffee extract powder, and passionfruit powder until powders have dissolved as much as possible. Acai powder is a bit hard to fully dissolve, so there will be some granules remaining.

Remove from heat and stir in lemon juice.

Return to heatproof bowl or pour into large mason jar and put in fridge to cool completely.

🩷 How to make Pink Drink

Now that the Strawberry Acai base is made, it's easy to turn it into a homemade Pink Drink!

Just add about ½ cup strawberry acai base and ½ cup sweetened coconut milk to an ice-filled shaker and shake well to combine.

Note that the shade of your Pink Drink will depend on what kind of coconut milk you use. I highly recommend getting barista blend if you can find it as it's whiter than the average coconut milk and will make your drink a pretty pale shade of pink, like what you get in the coffee shop.

Pour mixture into an ice-filled glass with freeze-dried strawberries (you can also add the strawberries to the shaker to shake with the drink if you prefer).

All that's missing is the cold foam! And that's easy to make, too!

🥛 How to make homemade cold foam

Knowing how to make homemade cold foam is a great skill to have because in addition making the Pink Drink with Cold Foam, there are SO many other drinks you can make with it. And so many flavors of cold foam you can make.

To make it, add milk, cream, and vanilla syrup in a mason jar and shake to combine. Alternatively, you can stir all ingredients together in a bowl.

This is your Vanilla Sweet Cream, which is also a great drink addition. If you're not using right away, keep in an airtight container in the fridge.

I recommend turning the sweet cream into a cold foam right before you're ready to enjoy your Pink Drink.

To turn it into foam, simply use an electric frother, hand mixer, or blender.

Just add the sweet cream and froth, mix, or blend until the mixture turns into a foam.

If you don't have any of those devices, you can just shake the mixture in a mason jar until it's frothy.

Now dollop the cold foam over the top of your Pink Drink.

Some of it will start to drizzle down into the Pink Drink creating the most beautiful cloud-like swirls.

And you'll instantly realize Vanilla Cold Foam is the most perfect addition to the Pink Drink. Strawberry and vanilla is the best flavor combination and the added creaminess is always welcome.

It's easy to see why the Pink Drink with Cold Foam has become such a popular drink!

🎉 Variations on recipe

When it comes to modifications, getting the Pink Drink with Cold Foam is one of the most popular ones. But there are so many other mods you can add to this drink to make it even tastier.

Here are a few ideas:

• Instead of the standard Vanilla Cold Foam, try another flavor. I have recipes for Chocolate Cold Foam (who doesn't love a strawberry and chocolate combination?). Lavender Cold Foam, Macadamia Cream Cold Foam, and Pistachio Cream Cold Foam would also be delicious. If you want to double up the strawberry flavor, add a Strawberry Cold Foam.

• Add even more vanilla flavoring into your Pink Drink by adding a pump or two of vanilla syrup.

• Add raspberry syrup to the drink for more berry flavor. Or add strawberry puree.

• If you're adding Chocolate Cold Foam to your drink, you may as well add in some swirls of mocha sauce, too! White mocha sauce would also be tasty.

• For a dairy-free version, you can make the cold foam with coconut cream instead of milk and heavy cream.

• If you don't like coconut milk, you can make the Pink Drink with any kind of milk or non-dairy alternative. Lots of people love it with heavy cream.

• Top the cold foam with more freeze-dried strawberries.

Not only are the coffee shops adding lots of new cold foam drinks, but customers also love adding cold foams to drinks that don't have them! And I definitely don't blame them.

Now, I almost can't imagine getting a Pink Drink without cold foam. It complements the flavors so well and makes the drink so much more delicious!

How do you like ordering your Pink Drinks?

📖 Recipe