This Homemade Horchata Syrup Is The Upgrade Your Iced Coffee Needs

It's an iced horchata coffee summer — at least, according to the 2025 Starbucks summer menu, it is. The coffee chain introduced a new coffee drink called the Iced Horchata Oatmilk Shaken Espresso, where Starbucks' Blonde Espresso Roast is combined with a Mexican-inspired, horchata-flavored syrup and oat milk. Not only are there several other drinks on the Starbucks menu that you can add its seasonal horchata syrup to, but you can also make it yourself to easily upgrade your iced coffee at home — no matter the time of year. 

According to Starbucks, its horchata syrup is made from a combination of cinnamon, vanilla, and rice flavors. That's pretty on par with the flavors found in traditional, Mexican horchata beverages — and your homemade horchata syrup will need to be too, which means you're going to need to break out the rice. You can use any variety that you have on hand, but most horchata recipes call for basic, long-grain white rice. All you'll need is ¼ cup of it to get its starchy and subtly sweet flavor, along with a teaspoon of ground cinnamon or a cinnamon stick, a cup of sugar, and 1 ½ cups of water. 

Mixed together, added to a saucepan, and brought to a simmer, all it needs is about 10 minutes on the stovetop and another 10 minutes to cool before you can strain the liquid and add vanilla extract to taste. But there are ways to customize it. 

Transferred to a mason jar or syrup bottle, your homemade syrup will last you two weeks in the fridge. But if you want to amp it up a little bit, there are ways you can make your horchata syrup on your own. You're already going through the trouble of making it yourself from scratch, so you might as well jazz it up a bit. Fortunately, being essentially vanilla and cinnamon flavored, the flavors in your horchata syrup will go with just about anything you feel like adding to it.

One idea is to swap the white rice in the recipe for brown, providing a more intense, earthy flavor. You could also swap the white sugar for brown, to give it even more of a warm, caramel-like taste. As far as additions go, you can go in all kinds of directions. But, to continue in the warm direction, the addition of nut butter or tahini would complement the slightly nutty flavor of the rice. For something umami and savory, you could add white miso paste, which would give this syrup another dimension of flavor. Depending on the season, you could even experiment by adding your favorite summer fruit to the mix or pumpkin puree in the fall.