Hey everyone! Gosh it’s been over a year–and what a year guys! My photography business is going great, I just went full time and I have transitioned from sports to doing weddings and branding photography. So totally different!!

I have other updates to make, but for the time being, I want to help everyone enjoy Starbucks without drinking all their sugar grams for the week. And it’s super easy at Starbucks to drink a crap ton of sugar!

Pumpkin Spice Latte

Is the PSL your jam? Am I sad that I just wrote PSL?? Yup. The pumpkin spice latte is a fall staple but it also comes with a whopping 50 grams of sugar just for the grande! 50 grams of sugar!!!! “But Christine I order it non-fat and no whipped cream, I obviously cut my sugar grams in half, right?” Wrong. Oh so wrong. In fact by going with non-fat milk you just increased your sugars by one! And by getting rid of the whipped cream you got rid of two grams of sugar.

So how do you get the joy from PSL season and not ingest a fuck ton of sugar? Obviously I will encourage you to get a tall or a short of the drink, and have it maybe once every two weeks at the most. If you want your PSL hot here is the a great recipe that will still taste like fall:

Grande:

• 2 pumps pumpkin spice
• 1 pump sugar-free cinnamon dolce
• ristretto shots
• cinnamon powder steamed into the milk

So what did I just do? I cut the pumps of pumpkin spice in half. Then I added some sweetness with the cinnamon dolce syrup. Then I asked them to change the way they pull their espresso shots, so they are sweeter. Lastly, I ask for cinnamon powder, but not put on top, I want it steamed into the milk. Milk has naturally occurring sugars in it, so when you steam the milk with the cinnamon powder, it naturally sweetens the spice.

Want this iced? Just don’t do the cinnamon powder, it will get chunky in the drink and taste odd.

Salted Caramel Mocha

So there isn’t much to make this sucker ok. Guys, this drink is 59 grams of sugar!!! 59 GRAMS OF SUGAR. #dontdoit But if it is your jam them here are three small things you can do:

• substitute the regular mocha for the skinny mocha sauce
• a grande of this drink has 4 pumps of mocha and toffee nut syrups, that’s 8 pumps of syrup, double what goes into a traditional flavored latte. So cut it in half, ask for 2 pumps of each for a grande.
• if you want to really watch your sugar I would honestly recommend doing doing the first two points {subbing in skinny mocha and then cutting the pumps of syrup in half}, and then asking for the vanilla powder to be steamed into the milk. Hint of sweetness, making up for the less pumps = winning!

So get out there tiger and try these recipes! And if you do, let me know how it went. The pumpkin spice one hot is my favorite, and I have gone down to two pumps in the venti, no whip. It’s ahhhhhmazing!!