Starbucks is known for their seasonal menus, such as their summer refreshers, their fall coffees, and the newly-released Christmas menu. They have a wide variety of festive drinks and foods to choose from and today Signe Klinger, Leah Macdonald, Anahi Rodas-Mendoza and Riley O’Brien decided to review them so you can know which items on the menu you should try. We tried 4 different drinks and 4 different food items and rated them all on a scale from 1-10. We began with the 4 food items, the Sugar Plum Cheese Danish, Polar Bear Cake Pop, Snowman Sugar Cookie, and Cinnamon Pull-Apart Bread.

Sugar Plum Cheese Danish 

Signe – “I personally don’t like danishes and I wasn’t expecting to like this but I did. 7.5/10”

Leah – “It was good but I don’t love the combo of fruit and the cheese custard. 6/10”

Anahi – “I didn’t expect much from it because I have never tried anything sugar plum flavored before, but overall it’s a good danish. Solid 7/10”

Riley – “It was good but wasn’t very Christmas-y and just feels like something that could be on the menu year-round. 6/10”

Cinnamon Pull-Apart Bread

Signe – “I had high expectations for this one, but it was too sweet and really doughy/chewy. 7/10”

Leah – “I wanted to like this one, but I didn’t really get much sweetness from it and it reminded me of just salty bread. 5/10”

Anahi – “I love a good cinnamon roll and that reminded me a lot of one so I enjoyed it a lot. 8.5/10”

Riley – “It reminds me of those cinnamon sugar pretzels you can get from the mall, but it’s quite dry. 4/10”

Snowman Sugar Cookie

Signe – “I normally love sugar cookies, but this one kind of let me down. The frosting sort of tasted like white chocolate, which isn’t bad, just not what I was hoping for. 5/10”

Leah – “I found the cookie to be too buttery and I felt like the icing wasn’t really there so It was sort of all cookie no icing. 4/10”

Anahi – “This might be controversial, but the texture is really nice but it isn’t too over the top and really is just a classic sugar cookie. 10/10”

Riley – “Personally this is like a perfect cookie because the icing isn’t super sugary and the cookie actually has flavor compared to other sugar cookies that are purely sugary with no taste. 9/10”

Polar Bear Cake Pop

Signe – “It’s a very solid cake pop, but then again nothing new or special about it besides the fact it’s a polar bear. 8/10”

Leah – “It just tasted like your regular run-of-the-mill cake pop. Nothing special, but very festive. 4/10”

Anahi – “Cake pops really aren’t my thing and this was just overly sweet. 4/10”

Riley – “It’s a good cake pop, but I don’t love the inside. It’s vanilla, but I feel like that’s so boring and since it’s the holidays it should be more fun like peppermint or something. The polar bear is really cute though. 7/10”

That concluded our reviews on the holiday food items. Next we moved onto the drinks: the Peppermint Mocha, Sugar Cookie Latte, Iced Gingerbread Chai, and the Caramel Brulee Latte.

Caramel Brulee Latte (Hot) 

Signe – “This drink really isn’t as sweet as I would like it to be given the name, but was very good for a hot drink. 6/10”

Leah – “It was sort of just ok. I don’t love warm drinks, but I think for a warm drink it has a very nice sweetness to coffee balance. Very good for the caramel lovers out there. 7.5/10”

Anahi – “This is my signature drink to order in the winter months and definitely gets me in the holiday spirit. It has everything I like in a drink, caramel, whipped cream, and really good coffee. 10/10”

Riley – “Very good although I am normally not a fan of warm drinks. In my opinion it sort of just tasted like a caramel macchiato so it didn’t really wow me. 8/10”

Peppermint Mocha (Hot)

Leah – “This is a good drink if you really enjoy drinks on the more mintier side, but I think the chocolate and peppermint kinda taste go really well together. I don’t usually like the flavor of peppermint, but I ended up liking this drink. 7/10”

Anahi – “This is my second favorite drink to order during the holiday season! I really enjoy how I can taste the peppermint flavor through the mocha and how it all just gets put together. It reminds me a lot of my childhood. I would have enjoyed more whipped cream, but overall an amazing drink. 8.6/10”

Riley – “This is definitely Christmas in a cup and tastes exactly like the name. I don’t get a lot of coffee taste so in my opinion it just tastes like peppermint hot chocolate. A very good drink if you don’t love the taste of coffee. 7/10”

Gingerbread Chai (Iced)

Leah – “I personally liked this one because I like the flavors of chai and cinnamon. I didn’t really enjoy how sweet it was. 4/10”

Anahi – “Me personally I just cannot enjoy chai, it is just not a taste I can fathom. Either way I do not taste much gingerbread in this drink, it is just foamy in my opinion. 3/10”

Riley – “I really don’t like gingerbread flavored things because they are too strong and chai is already strong on its own so this is personally just too much. This could be a very good drink if you like cinnamon a lot. 3/10”

Sugarcookie Latte (Iced)

Leah – “This is one of my favorite christmas drinks because it’s not overly sweet but also not too bitter. The only thing I don’t like about it is the sprinkles because they sink to the bottom and get soggy. 9/10”

Anahi – “This is perfect if you are aiming for a festive iced drink! It tastes insanely close to a sugar cookie in a coffee. I really like how it is not extremely sweet, it is the perfect amount. I also love the presentation and toppings. 9.5/10”

Riley – “This is my favorite drink out of all of them. It tastes just like the sugarcookie we tried earlier and I really think Starbucks got this spot on. 10/10”

That concludes our Starbucks Holiday Menu review. It was tons of fun to try out all the seasonal drinks and food and it really got all 4 of us into the Christmas mood. If we could recommend one drink and one food to you it would be the Iced Sugar Cookie Latte w/ Sugar Cookie Cold Foam and the Polar Bear Cake Pop. We hope you get to try these out too and Happy Holidays!