With its sweet flavor and delicate caramel pattern, the Caramel Macchiato was once as famous as the Latte and Mocha, becoming a coffee drink that swept the globe. Although it is no longer commonly seen in coffee shops today, its method is actually not complicated. Join Front Street Coffee to learn about the ingredients of the Caramel Macchiato, its essential difference from a Macchiato, and how to easily recreate this "coffee in a sugar coat" at home. With just four ingredients—espresso, milk, vanilla syrup, and caramel sauce—and a grasp of a few key steps, you can restore that remembered taste of sweet caramel aroma intertwined with dense milk foam.

For more specialty coffee knowledge, please follow: Front Street Coffee ( Frontsteet Coffee )

If one were to pick a coffee that can captivate a large number of female consumers from appearance to flavor, it would have to be the Caramel Macchiato. This unique milk coffee was launched by a world-renowned chain brand in the 1990s. Its production process is actually not complicated. Front Street's method is: first stir the vanilla syrup and espresso together, then pour in steamed milk that has been frothed with milk foam, and finish by squeezing caramel sauce onto the fine, white milk foam, drawing patterns.

With its sweet taste and exquisite caramel sauce decoration (the image above is for illustration only), the Caramel Macchiato once kept pace with the Latte, Mocha, and Cappuccino, and was wildly popular worldwide. Whether in physical coffee shops or in films and television works, it appeared frequently. However, with the evolution of consumption trends, this drink is now increasingly difficult to find in coffee shops. Just yesterday, a customer at Front Street's store was lamenting this.

Fortunately, the threshold for making a Caramel Macchiato is not high! As long as the materials are all prepared, you can easily recreate the taste of the past at home. Therefore, today Front Street will talk with everyone about how to make a standard Caramel Macchiato!

However, one point needs to be made clear: the Caramel Macchiato shares part of its name with another Italian coffee, the Macchiato, so many people mistakenly think it is a derivative of the Macchiato. But friends who have been following Front Street's content should know that the only overlap between the two is in the name. From the taste experience to the flavor layers, the "core" of these two coffees can be said to be completely different.

The Macchiato originated in Italian coffee shops in the 1980s. In the article "Why Italians Don't Drink Pour-Over Coffee," Front Street mentioned that since the advent of the pressurized coffee machine, espresso has become Italians' daily first choice. As everyone knows, espresso is extremely concentrated, with a focused and intense flavor, and not everyone can easily accept it.

Italians' pursuit of espresso does not stop there; they have even stricter standards for taste. Therefore, in Italy, beans used to make espresso usually include Robusta in the blend and adopt a darker roast level, so that the extracted coffee has a stronger flavor performance.

But not everyone can adapt to such strong coffee from the start, so some people would ask the barista to add a little milk to the espresso to soften the bitterness of the coffee. Because the amount of milk is very small, the finished product looks almost no different from ordinary espresso. To avoid confusion in the output, the barista made a mark with milk foam on the surface of the espresso with added milk.

With this mark, the barista could distinguish it from regular espresso. This is precisely the origin of the name Macchiato—in Italian, Macchiato means "mark, stain."

The next part of the story is just as Front Street mentioned at the beginning: in the 1990s, a drink called "Caramel Macchiato" was born. After reading the introductions to both, it is not hard to find that one is an espresso with a small amount of milk added, while the other is a "latte" blended with multiple syrups. The two are completely different concepts. Therefore, apart from having similar names, the Caramel Macchiato and the Macchiato have almost nothing else in common.

But it must be admitted that the Caramel Macchiato is indeed very delicious. Because the surface is covered with a layer of caramel sauce, the first thing you feel when drinking it is the sweetness of caramel, then the softness of the milk foam, and finally the milk coffee with a vanilla aroma, with very distinct layers. It is also often called "coffee in a sugar coat." All right, enough idle talk. Next, let Front Street share the specific method for the classic version of the Caramel Macchiato~

How should a Caramel Macchiato be made?

Making a Caramel Macchiato mainly requires four ingredients: espresso, milk, vanilla syrup, and caramel sauce. One thing to note here: do not choose caramel sauce that is too viscous; it should have a certain fluidity, and of course it cannot be a completely liquid syrup.

First, we need to extract the espresso. For this extraction, the coffee beans Front Street selected are Front Street Classic Blend from the bean list. This recipe is composed of three producing regions—Brazil, Indonesia, and Vietnam—and uses a dark roast, which can highlight the coffee's rich aroma to the greatest extent and also makes it easy for everyone to extract abundant, dense coffee crema. It is suitable whether for making an Americano diluted with water or a Latte paired with milk, and can be purchased at Front Street's Taobao store or Front Street's Tmall flagship store. The espresso extraction parameters are 20g of grounds, extracting 40ml of coffee liquid within 30 seconds.

After the coffee liquid is extracted, set it aside for later use, then begin frothing the milk. Here Front Street will use 200ml of milk. Since the milk foam will later carry the caramel sauce, you can introduce a little more air when frothing, making the milk foam slightly thicker than that of a regular latte.

After frothing is finished, you can begin "assembling" the Caramel Macchiato! The first step is to pour 12ml of vanilla syrup and the frothed milk into the prepared cup; the milk can directly fill it up.

Then, pour the espresso in from the center! This method of pouring the espresso last can make the overall appearance more beautiful, but the drawback is that it is best to stir it evenly with a spoon before drinking.

After pouring the espresso, you can immediately drizzle the caramel sauce! Before use, the caramel sauce can be appropriately chilled, which can reduce its fluidity and make it more convenient to draw patterns!

Here Front Street has drawn a simple pattern. Once the pattern is completed, the Caramel Macchiato is done.

As for the taste and mouthfeel when drinking, just as Front Street introduced earlier, there is no need to repeat it here. In addition to this simple pattern, there are also many complex and exquisite fancy patterns, and the Caramel Macchiato also has other versions. Front Street has shared them in previous articles, so there is no need to expand on them here~

The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.