Homemade Pumpkin Spice Latte
Once you try my homemade pumpkin spice latte, you might never hit up the coffee drive-through ever again! My DIY PSL is easy to make, and it's packed full of the same fall flavor you're used to from the coffee shop for pennies on the dollar.
🔍 Recipe At-A-Glance: Homemade Pumpkin Spice Latte
- ⏰ Prep Time: 5 minutes
- 🕰️ Cook Time: 5 minutes
- 🎃 Flavor Profile: Sweet, creamy, pumpkin-y, packed full of fall spices-basically pumpkin pie, but make it coffee
- 💪 Why It's Better Than Starbucks: $7 for a coffee? Heck no. This baby costs pennies, and you are 100% in control-make it decaf, make it dairy-free, make it sugar-free. You do you!
- 🥄 Good For: Cozy fall moments! Especially combined with a slice of my pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting or one of my pumpkin cake pops.
- 🧡 Difficulty: If you can stir, you can make this!
"I made this this morning-SO YUMMY! Way better then Starbucks for sure!
- LAURA -
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🧡 Why You'll Love This Recipe
Hiya: Recreating my coffee shop faves at home helped cured me of a nasty little Starbucks habit that was gonna send me to the poor house! My homemade salted caramel mocha, eggnog latte, gingerbread latte, peppermint mocha, dirty chai latte, and this homemade pumpkin spice latte have all really changed my coffee game!
Here's why you'll love this recipe:
- Pennies on the dollar: $6.29 for a grande PSL? Hard pass. This homemade pumpkin spice latte costs just pennies.
- Customizable: Want to make a vegan pumpkin spice latte? No problem. Like a little more cloves? Easy. Prefer stevia to sugar? Done.
- So easy to make: It will take you less time to make this at home than to get through the drive-thru at the coffee shop. I promise.
- The best pumpkin spice flavor: Pumpkin, cinnamon, cloves, oh my! This tastes like my homemade pumpkin pie recipe, just in coffee form.
🎃 The Ingredients You Need
- Pumpkin puree: Did you know that manys coffee shops' pumpkin lattes have no actual pumpkin? True facts. But mine does! It adds sweetness, creaminess, flavor, and a beautiful color. Use store-bought or you can make pumpkin puree at home.
- Make it sugar-free: Swap in stevia or monkfruit for the maple syrup
- Coffee or espresso: Espresso is really the star of the latte, but if you don't have an espresso pot, strongly brewed coffee or instant espresso will work.
- Milk: I like whole cow's milk, my husband likes oatmilk-you can choose your own adventure here! Just know that non-dairy milk might not froth as much.
Make sure to check the recipe card below for the full ingredients list, along with quantities and my expert tips and tricks.
🔁 Variations & Substitutions
- Make it vegan: Use plant-based milk. Oatmilk is my favorite vegan option-especially the Extra Creamy kind from Chobani. A combo of almondmilk and full-fat coconut milk is also great!
- Make it decaf: Use decaf coffee or espresso. Easy!
- Make it sugar-free: Leave out the maple syrup and instead swap in stevia or monk fruit.
- Make it iced: Instead of heating up all the ingredients on the stove, just blend or whisk all the ingredients together well. Then pour over ice. Done!
- Make it protein coffee: Use high-protein milk (like Fairlife) and/or mix in a scoop of vanilla protein powder.
- Make it using pumpkin spice syrup: You can use a few pumps of store-bought or homemade pumpkin spice syrup for coffee in place of most of this recipe. I've got the full instructions in the recipe card.
☕️ How to Make A Pumpkin Latte
Step 1: Combine milk, syrup, vanilla, and pumpkin in a small saucepan and heat over medium heat until steam rises
Step 2: Add in the pumpkin pie spice and coffee. Heat until just warmed through.
Step 3: Whisk rapidly until the mixture is frothy (or use an immersion blender or milk frother for extra foam). Many plant-based milks wont foam as well as animal-based milks.
Step 4: Pour into mugs and top with a sprinkle of pumpkin pie spice. Serve hot.
🙋🏻♀️ Homemade Pumpkin Spice Latte FAQs
Most pumpkin spice lattes contain espresso or strong coffee, frothed milk, a sweetener of some sort, and pumpkin pie spice. Some also contain pumpkin puree.
The combo of the creaminess and flavor from real pumpkin puree mixed with a heavy hand of classic fall spices makes the Starbucks PSL so tasty.
👩🏻🍳 My Expert Tips & Tricks
- Got foam? Whole cow's milk will froth the best. And you can get the most foam by going at the latte with an immersion blender. Some non-dairy milks froth better (oatmilk) than others (almondmilk). If you want a ton of foam without a milk steamer, try warming a little in the microwave, then putting it in a French press. Pump up and down the French press until you have a ton of foam. Pour on top of your latte.
- No espresso? No problem: You can use strongly brewed coffee or instant espresso powder. Although I do recommend investing in an espresso pot. It's life-changing, and you can use it for my dirty chai latte, my easy espresso martini recipe, my white chocolate mocha recipe, my iced mocha recipe, my vanilla latte recipe...I could keep going.
🍁 More Fall Drinks to Enjoy
If you tried this Homemade Pumpkin Spice Latte or any other recipe on my blog, please leave a 🌟 star rating and let me know how it went in the comments!
📖 Recipe
Homemade Pumpkin Spice Latte Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 cup milk whole milk, full-fat coconut milk, or oatmilk preferred
- 2 tablespoons pumpkin puree
- 2 tablespoons maple syrup
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- ¼ teaspoon pumpkin pie spice to taste (plus more for garnish)
- ⅓ cup strongly brewed hot coffee or espresso
Instructions
- Whisk together the milk, pumpkin puree, maple syrup, and vanilla extract in a medium saucepan over medium heat.
- Heat until steam rises from the edges of the pan, about five minutes.
- Remove from the heat and stir in the pumpkin pie spice and coffee.
- Whisk rapidly until the mixture is frothy (or use an immersion blender for extra foam).
- Pour into mugs and sprinkle with a little pumpkin pie spice.
Video
Notes
- To make this using my homemade pumpkin spice syrup for coffee, combine 2-4 tablespoons of syrup (to taste) with the coffee, pumpkin puree, and milk.
- For a creamy vegan pumpkin spice latte, I love the combination of 1 ½ cup oat milk with ½ cup full-fat coconut milk.
- To make this iced: whisk or blend all the ingredients in a bowl or glass measuring cup, then pour over ice.
- If you do not have pumpkin pie spice, use ¼ teaspoon cinnamon and one small pinch each of allspice, cloves, ginger, and nutmeg (or just cinnamon if you're low on spices!).
- To make this decaf: use decaf coffee or espresso.
Nutrition
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It sounds so delicious~ What a perfect drinks for cold days~ Thank you for sharing the recipe! I can't wait to try it.
I'd love to do this, and definitely will try this weekend. During the week I have to try and get myself and a 3month old out of the house pretty quickly - think this would last ok in the fridge overnight for an iced latte in the AM?
thanks!
Absolutely! You might have to give it a little bit of a shake in the morning, but it should still be tasty.
Just made this! It turned out wonderful. Delicious flavor and easy to make. Great at home pumpkin latte! Thank you.
Oh sweet, sweet latte goodness. I have make sooo many of these now! So absolutely delicious!
Thanks for the recipe! I'm actually sipping on it right now. It was the perfect thing to get me up this morning. You're right, there are so many pumpkin spice latte recipes out there, but your recipe is so simple and delicious. Took me about 5 minutes to make. I used an emulsifier at the very end to get it really frothy and to mix all the ingredients. Thanks, Cassie!
Omg I totally want to make this! 🙂
Could I use fake coffee instead? I'm super sensitive to caffeine (even green tea makes me wired)...
Thanks for sharing all of your wonderful, yummylicious recipes with us! <3
Absolutely! I used decaf for mine.
I make them a lot. I have an espresso maker with a steam wand so I make lattes all the time. Plus I worked in a cafe for a while, so there's that.
I made this this morning------SO YUMMY! Way better then Starbucks for sure!
NOM NOM NOM.
Butterscotch schnapps!
With those two tablespoons of vanilla, it might almost be as expensive as Starbucks! Haha I only buy the real stuff so it could get pricey however I am sure this is worth making at least once this season!:) I will try it.
Haha! I buy the real stuff, too. It isn't that bad because this makes two-three large servings. Which are about $4 a pop at the ole 'Bucks!
ohh thanks for posting this! I would have thought the pumpkin would need to be strained, but I guess not! Probably makes for a hearty thick and delicious latte. I love the pumpkin spice lattes but I have never made homemade so I think I'll try this. Sometimes there is nothing wrong with posting a common recipe because not all of your readers navigate the entire blog world you know 😉 Some people only follow a couple, so be your own voice.
Hahah, thanks Lindsay! 🙂
Oh my yum! I'd like to remove cows milk from my diet (lactose issues), but I'm terrified for some reason of non cow milk options. Do you have any non dairy milk guide that you go off of? Like taste, cooking, baking for soy, almond, coconut milk etc. Sweetened, unsweetened. Or do you just wing it and buy a milk that you think you'd like?
I just wing it! I really like the taste of almond milk and I don't eat processed soy, so I used almond milk almost exclusively. I almost always have unsweetened vanilla around for sweet things and some unsweetened plain for savory things. And sometimes we buy a box or two of sweetened chocolate just for a treat! Don't be scared. Just go out and buy stuff and see which ones you like!
This sounds awesome and I LOVE that first photo! Gorgeous staging.
Thanks Dani! 🙂
I don't usually make fancy coffee at home, but I do want to try this one. I love PSL.
Let me know how you like it if you do. 🙂
That looks really yummy, and now I'm going to have to try it. Though now I have to figure out what exactly pumpkin pie spice is so I can make it at home.
We make cappuccino every day and on hot days we just turn it into Vietnamese iced coffee. So yummy!
I believe that McCormick's actually makes a spice mix called "Pumpkin Pie Spice".
Yeah, I've seen it, but couldn't remember what was in it. But since we keep all the individual spices at home, it's easy enough to whip of my own version. I found a recipe at Baking Bites that shows you the quantities, so yay!
Thanks for the link! That will be useful later in the year for baking. 🙂