Homemade Sticky Toffee Cooler

I recently had a sticky toffee cooler from Costa Coffee and it was amazing, creamy, icy, sweet cinder toffee goodness in a tall plastic cup with a fat straw - bliss. I also love the caramel Frappuccino's from Starbucks both of the icy drinks are a special treat, at over £3 a pop they are expensive and the sugar content is high, very high.

Homemade sticky toffee cooler 


I wanted to recreate the coffee drink at home and it was while I was searching for a recipe that I discovered the Costa medio semi skimmed cooler has 61.6g of sugar and 480cals the Starbucks grande caramel Frapucinno with 2% milk has a whopping 63g of sugar 400 calories.

I'll forego the whipped cream but it's all that sugar I really need to ditch.  I know dates make a great toffee sauce and that's where I started my experiments.


I tried soaking dates to make syrup

I tried to make my own date syrup but even after soaking, the skin on the dates doesn't completely break down meaning that there are tiny flecks of date skin in the your sticky toffee cooler. I could have lived with that but as an alternative I've recently discovered Crazy Jack's organic date syrup which is rich, glossy and most importantly smooth and bit free.



I used frozen milk cubes to keep the drink thick and creamy and it means that there is no water diluting the flavour as your sticky toffee drink melts. You could go for semi skimmed milk but I don't think it gives the same creaminess, almond milk works great too.



Ingredients (serves 1)
Full fat milk cubes
50ml milk
1 Shot of Espresso
1 Tablespoon of date syrup

Blitz all of the ingredients in the blender until you have a thick slushie drink.




Do you have a hack for your favourite coffee shop drink?