Starbucks Pink Drink Recreation Mocktail Monday w/ Rebecca

By Jonathan Saldivar

Transcript

Hi everyone, my name’s Rebecca and I'm here with 310 Nutrition. Today we’re going to be celebrating Mocktail Monday and I’m going to be showing you how I use 310’s Hibiscus Tea and collagen powder to create a drink that is an absolute summer staple. 

So the drink recipe is based on the iconic Starbuck’s Pink Drink. If you haven’t tried it by now, you’ve definitely seen it. It has this unmistakable, creamy, bright-light pink color and it has fresh strawberries floating around in it. You can’t miss it. If you haven’t tried it yet, you can just skip the Starbuck’s drink and make this instead because, long story short, the drink’s not super healthy. It’s not terrible, but my version of the pink drink is actually pretty nutritious. It contains protein, a lot of collagen, and is an antioxidant powerhouse. 

On that note, one of the things that I was really put off about the Starbuck’s Pink Drink that inspired me to come up with this drink, was the fact that it contains 24 grams of sugar. That’s a lot. And I don’t want to be consuming that much sugar in 1 sitting. That being said, I turned the pink drink into a nutritional alternative. It has no added sugar, whatsoever. 

Ingredient List

I’m going to jump right in to telling you what ingredients we’ll be using today. First and foremost we’ll be doing 1 sachet of the 310 Hibiscus Tea, one scoop of the collagen powder, ¾ cup of fresh strawberries, and 1 cup of unsweetened coconut milk, and ice. 

Before I get into actually making the Pink Drink, I thought I should tell you a little bit about why I chose to use 310’s Hibiscus Tea and the Collagen Powder in my pink drink. For starters, the Hibiscus Tea has several different ingredients that all have potentially really powerful health benefits so I’m going to go over all the ingredients with you. Bear with me on some of the names. You would think I probably should’ve Googled the hard ones before, but alas, bear with me.  

Ingredient Benefits

Hibiscus, that flower, is super flavorful, vibrant in color, here is some brewed tea as you can see. Loaded with antioxidants including vitamin C. Antioxidants, if you’re not familiar, can help the body fight against free radicals. So it’s great to load up on them because it’ll help your cells with aging. 

So that’s the first ingredient. The second ingredient is organic green tea. Which you guys are probably familiar with, it’s a pretty popular supplement. Also rich in antioxidants and it can boost your metabolic rate and potentially increase fat burning. 

Then there’s yerba mate, also in the green tea family (I believe). It’s also loaded with antioxidants and amino acids and has been shown to help support your metabolism. 

Here’s one I’m going to struggle with-- guarana. It’s an excellent source of caffeine, which can help fight fatigue, potentially improve focus, and may also boost your metabolism. 

Wuyi Oolong contains a wide array of vitamins and minerals, and amino acids and you guessed it--more antioxidants. See a trend here? At the beginning I said this was an antioxidant powerhouse and I was not kidding. 

Organic Rooibos, research shows that it may help reduce stress hormones that trigger hunger and reduce fat storage. 

Ginger, super well recognized for a wide variety of different medicinal purposes, it’s known for being a digestive aid and immune supporter. It also may have thermogenic properties that may help the metabolism. 

Pomegranate, the fruit that’s known for being particularly antioxidant-rich, and also lends itself to this bright color. It may support metabolism and immune system as well. 

And last, but not least, birch. Which aids in the body’s detoxification process by increasing water loss. 

So, simply put, this is an antioxidant powerhouse with many potential health benefits, totally worth using to make my pink drink. 

Although the Starbucks pink drink does not have collagen in it, I consider the collagen, my pink drink’s secret weapon. Once I tell you the benefits of collagen powder you’ll understand why I decided to add it. 

Just to give you some background around collagen--collagen is the #1 most abundant protein in your body. It makes up your connective tissues that include your skin, your muscles, your bones--there’s more to that list. Supplementing with collagen has become increasingly popular recently. I sometimes take the pills, but they're really really big and you got to take a lot of them. So the powder is honestly my favorite way to take collagen. I definitely want to reap the benefits of it but, swallowing those pills is not something I would do everyday.

Supplementing with collagen has several well-established science facts (benefits) like: improved skin health, joint pain relief, bone loss prevention, muscle growth, and optimal digestion. That's just a few that's just scratching the surface.

I love this collagen powder specifically for a couple reasons: number one it’s totally tasteless. So I can add it to any drink and it won’t impact the flavor. That being said I can also add it to other recipes including: soups and baked goods. Again, I really want to get my collagen, I want to age well. I like that it can be--it’s versatile. Second, it has 11 grams of protein which is fabulous because this drink you know, it's not a meal, it's just kind of a refresher or whatever. But I do like to get him some extra protein--you know we're busy people--well not right now, in quarantine. I can sit down and eat all the food I wanted, but you know, on my day-to-day, regular schedule when you're running from point A to point B, it's great to be able to have a light drink that also has some proteins. It gives you just a little bit of fill--you're not... you're not starving and yeah. I've been able to add protein to a vegetable soup or whatever, your brownies, also fantastic.  

Last but not least, it's only 43 calories, which is considerably less than other collagen products or similar collagen products, on the market. 

So there's my overview. Next up, now that I told you why I like to use these ingredients, I figured we would jump into making the actual pink drink. 

Recipe Steps

The first step is to brew your hibiscus tea. I've done it in advance but I can walk you through the steps. I'm sure we've all brewed tea before, so there shouldn’t be too many surprises.

8-12 oz of water heated up, however you wanna do that. I boil it on the stove. Then pour the water into a mug and I take one hibiscus tea sachet--here it is it's really pretty looking--and I put it into the water. You let it steep for about 3 to 5 minutes that's adequate. I’m someone that really enjoys that strong flavor so I left the tea steep for 15-20 minutes. And before you do anything with the tea, it needs to cool down. So steep and cool down for as long as it takes. and steeped to your desired preference. Pop it in the refrigerator, let it be.

Once it's cooled down, you can go ahead and take the tea bag out.  I pre-brewed this about 20 minutes ago. So I gave it a little squeeze, making sure I'm getting all the flavor. And then I gotta add one scoop of the collagen powder. 

I forgot a spoon so give me one sec.

I really want to give it a good mix. I wanna say sometimes what I like to do, I put this in a really flimsy glass where I don’t want to put a whisk in it. I’ll transfer it out, into another glass and do a whisking just to make sure I don’t have any clumps of collagen. Or you can really just toss it in the blender, whip it up, and pour it back in here. 

So now we're going to move on to once done--the teas done--we’re going to move onto creating strawberry puree. 

You’re gonna take your cup of strawberries--I just leave them whole--they smell so good. You pour them in there. That’s done. And then you're going to add the coconut milk, unsweetened remember that that's crucial, because we wanna keep the sugar non-existent in this drink. 

And you're going to blend until smooth. I like really say,  just kind of leave it and let hat the blender do it’s Magic. Because the last thing you want is a kind of slushy texture. Part of like the magic of the pink drinks is it’s really creamy and light. So bear with me the blender’s about to go off for about a minute or so. 

That's looking pretty good. I’d just even drink that straight up. 

Great. So now you have your two components--it was basically coconut milk, strawberry puree, and tea. Now you have that. I'm going to grab a pitcher and go get some ice.

That is nice. First things first your gonna pour your collagen tea in there.

I hope this pitcher is big enough and i didn’t put too much ice. 

Then you’re going to take your strawberry puree. Perfect. Just a little bit extra great. Grab a big spoon. 

Really mix it up. I went a little overboard on the ice.

And voila. You have an entire pitcher of pink drink ready to go. 

I pre-sliced some strawberries to garnish my pink drink with. Cou can either garnishing here or when you pour yourself a glass you can garnish in there. So when you glass and show you how it garnish I'm just getting all of us getting all the ice. 

So here's my little slice of strawberries. I really want to make it look like Pinterest, get crafty but it’s a little bit too cloudy on the outside. I forget how much of a mess I make when I like cook things. So there you go, you have a pink drink now.

Last but not least, like I said there's no sweeteners in this but the hibiscus tea contain stevia which is an all natural sweetener, zero calories. So definitely, you know, try it out first have a sip before you do add any sort of sweetener. I personally don't think it needs it, but you're welcome to add it if that floats your boat. And that pretty much does it for today's mocktail Monday. I'm looking out the window and isn't it an absolutely beautiful summer-esque day in Southern California. So I'm going to take my pink drink and go sit outside in the sun and enjoy my lunch break. And if you have any questions about this drink or 310 in general make sure to leave them in the comments section and they'll be sure to get back to you. I hope you guys enjoyed today's recipe and don't forget to tune in next Monday for more mocktail creations!