Note:- I originally wrote this post over a week ago, but with everything going on, didn’t get around to posting it. It is very relevant to what happened next so I wanted to still post it.

If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll know that the Greggs Iced Caramelised Biscuit latte quite literally kept me going last year (I mentioned it in this post). I was absolutely devastated when they no longer sold it thanks to it then being pumpkin spice season. Devastated to the point that I actually emailed Tate & Lyle and asked them – politely, but with urgency – to please make the caramelised biscuit syrup available for retail. They never replied. 😦

At the time, they only sold it commercially, which briefly led me down a completely reasonable train of thought: what if I simply became a fake business? I did consider pretending to be an off-brand Greggs just so I could buy it. I even came up with a name for my fake bakery: Corach Crwst (Pastry Goblin). A perfectly legitimate establishment run out of my flat with only two customers, myself and my son. Probably a good job I didn’t open it considering I burnt Welsh cakes recently.

Fast forward to recently: I needed a new shopping trolley, so I found myself on Amazon. Naturally, I did my usual “just check if this thing exists yet” search that I’ve done countless times for the past year, and then… there it was. The Tate & Lyle Caramelised Biscuit syrup. Available to buy! Without fake bakery shenanigans!

The Chaos Goblin within me did not hesitate. Add to cart. IMMEDIATELY.

I then loudly announced to my son, with absolutely no decibel awareness whatsoever:
“OH MY GOD THEY HAVE THE TATE AND LYLE SYRUP ON AMAZON. DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS? I CAN HAVE ICED BISCUIT LATTES AT HOME”. If I had been emitting sound from an iPhone, it would have sent a volume warning message.

My son, who is unfortunately very used to this specific brand of chaos, smiled in that way that says, “Right. So this is the thing I’ll have to hear about everyday for the foreseeable”.

And yes – this is a whole post about iced biscuit lattes. It has, quite frankly, helped me SO MUCH during this painful cluster era of my life.

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Syrups Are Usually Hot Garbage

I have never liked ANY Monin syrups. They all taste dry, slightly alcoholic, and leave that weird bitter, chemical coating in your mouth like you’ve just accidentally sipped something you shouldn’t have. They’re also FAR too sweet. Not even nice sweet – just… aggressive. I genuinely don’t understand the appeal.

It’s one of the many reasons I’ve always preferred Americanos. The second reason is blood sugar. Every single Monin syrup I’ve tried has sent me on a full rollercoaster – spike, crash, nausea, existential regret. No good story ever started with salad, sure, but no good story has ever started with a blood sugar crash so bad you feel like you might cease to exist. Salad has never hurt me like that.

For some reason though, my blood sugar has always been completely fine when I’ve had a Greggs iced biscuit latte. So naturally, like any normal person, I leaned over and subtly peeked at what syrup they were using like I was conducting a stealth fixer gig in Cyberpunk 2077. That’s when I saw the Tate & Lyle label and immediately decided it must be some kind of magic elixir.

Now that I actually have the bottle of said magic elixir, and after more stealth based staring at Starbucks baristas making flavoured drinks, I realised the actual difference. The Tate and Lyle syrup has less sugar and also Greggs only use 1 pump of syrup and Starbucks regularly use 3. No wonder my body declared war.

The taste? Completely different to Monin. It doesn’t smell like Zoflora (which is already a strong start). It’s genuinely really, really nice – sweet, but balanced, with that mild spiced warmth you get from a Biscoff biscuit.

It is leagues above the Monin Speculoos syrup I panic bought when the Tate & Lyle one was still locked behind the “you must own a café” barrier. That one was absolutely horrendous. Not even worth enduring the blood sugar chaos for.

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We Have Greggs at Home

The other reason it’s great to have Greggs at home is that I can control not just the syrup, but the milk.

I use Supernutrio milk. It’s a high protein milk that’s “super” filtered, which sounds like marketing nonsense but actually isn’t. I originally started drinking it at the beginning of recovery because it’s really high in calcium (69% of your RDA per 250ml), potassium (21%), and phosphorus (54%) – all VERY important when refeeding.

I am THANKFULLY not in immediate danger from refeeding anymore (which is, without question, the WORST part of recovery), so I don’t have to think about it in the same way now. However, I still use it because I fell completely in love with this milk.

It’s creamy. Actually creamy. It genuinely reminds me of the glass bottle milk that used to get delivered to the door when I was growing up. It has that slightly thicker texture, that richness, and now every other milk just tastes thin and watery in comparison. I fear I’ve ruined all other milk for myself and will now be drinking super milk forever.

Through extensive scientific research (drinking an iced biscuit latte every single day since the syrup arrived), I’ve found that 150ml of milk is the perfect amount. That gives me about 11g of protein in the drink, which actually makes a noticeable difference. Protein seems to help regulate my blood sugar the most, so even that small amount makes the whole thing feel much more stable.

The ideal ratio, in case you were wondering, is:
– 150ml milk
– 20ml syrup
– topped up with cold brew or three shots of espresso

Which brings a tall glass to about 161 calories.

Yes, it’s still a fair bit of sugar – but I barely eat sugar elsewhere. I am, at my core, a savoury goblin. You could leave me alone with doughnuts, cake, and chocolate and absolutely nothing would happen. Leave me alone with wholemeal sourdough, Greggs pastries, nooch, peanut butter, or bran based cereals, however, and all bets are off.

I have refined this drink to such a degree that when we were actually in Greggs earlier, I found myself wanting my own version instead. So, naturally, I turned to my son, full of excitement, and said:

“We have Greggs at home!”

Unfortunately, I had forgotten to buy milk from Asda. So, in fact, we did not have Greggs at home. This was quickly rectified by going back out to get the one thing I had gone to Asda for in the first place. How I managed to forget something that important only explains my current constant confusion level.

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The Elixir of Cluster Headaches

I’ve been in a cluster headache episode, and caffeine really helps with the pain. If you drink it fast enough, it can even abort an attack. When Greggs brought back the Iced Biscuit Latte this season, I thought it was perfect timing but having the syrup at home, being able to have it every day, is even better.

I’ve always wondered why Red Bull works better for me than coffee. I’m starting to think it might just be speed. It’s cold, so you can drink it quickly. With cluster headaches, that speed seems to matter. Iced coffee works so much better for the pain than hot coffee ever has. Not to mention the hot flushes hot drinks now cause, which often triggers my cluster headaches. *Whinges in hormones*.

It means that I can have something comforting when I’m in pain. And for that reason, it genuinely feels like it’s changed my life. When I’m going through the worst pain I’ve ever experienced, I try to hold on to anything I can. Lately, that’s been an iced biscuit latte. Sometimes literally, holding the cup full of ice, against my head during an attack.

It turns treating my clusters into something that feels like a treat, rather than medicine. Red Bull always felt like medicine. This doesn’t. And thankfully, because it’s not Monin syrup, it doesn’t taste like it either. They’ve brightened nights that would otherwise just be pain. Now I can actually drink iced coffee every day without worrying about my blood sugar! (This sounds like a 90’s ad, none of this is an ad – I WISH it was. But no, I’m just this excited about coffee).

I did feel sad about losing my Starbucks Brown Sugar Shaken Espresso. Every time I had one, I felt awful – my blood sugar would crash, and I’d end up feeling horrendous. It felt like I was trying to do the “right” thing in recovery by not always having black coffee, only for it to backfire completely.

I’m not sad about that anymore. I can still have an Americano at Starbucks – but my iced biscuit latte will be waiting for me at home (well, as long as I actually REMEMBER the milk).

By the way, I did make one for my son to try and he did like it, but declared his iced caramel latte better. He is wrong, but I love him unconditionally.

Sometimes the things I hold on to during cluster headache attacks are big – my son who is wrong about lattes, memories, the little gaming shrines around my home. And sometimes, it’s something small. Like getting to drink an iced biscuit latte again.

A sweet little coffee song :-