Cream of Caffeine

Starbucks is one of the best-known brands in the specialty food world, serving a wide variety of handcrafted brewed beverages, teas, smoothies, chocolate beverages, baked goods...and, fortunately for us at Sprouts, ice cream.

Coffee ice cream has long been one of the more popular flavors in the U.S., even among people who don't drink fresh-brewed coffee. So it was only natural that America's most famous coffee company would gravitate toward frozen goodness.

In 2008, Starbucks teamed up with Unilever in an exclusive licensing agreement to market the ice cream in the U.S. and soon after introduced its lineup: Mocha Frappuccino, Java Chip Frappuccino, Coffee and Caramel Macchiato. Talk about swoon appeal! Each one has a rich coffee flavor, impossibly smooth texture, great mouth feel, and is packed into a newly designed white pint that is reminiscent of the Starbucks coffee cups at your neighborhood coffee house – right down to the checked boxes on the side. (Fess-up time: there are also three non-coffee flavors, Signature Hot Chocolate, Vanilla Bean Frappuccino, and Strawberries & Crème Frappuccino, but Sprouts doesn't carry them.)

It's worth noting that Starbucks doesn't sell these precious pints in their stores; these are supermarket items, and we're glad to have them. The best seller at Sprouts is the Java Chip Frappuccino, which is a magnificent marriage of aromatic coffee ice cream and dark chocolaty chunks. It's heavenly all by itself, but Starbucks has also created several parfait and sundae recipes using Java Chip Frappuccino as the key ingredient. The coffee-holics at Sprouts highly recommend this flavor.