Starbucks Sweet Snacks Menu USA

The Madeleines are a pack of three small French butter cakes, 220 calories, 17 g of sugar, $2.75. They declare Egg, Milk, Wheat. Soft in the middle, a little crisp at the edges, and the snack most often bought with a latte.

• Best for: a coffee pairing that is sweet without being a dessert.

The Marshmallow Dream Bar is a crispy rice and marshmallow bar, 230 calories with 24 g of sugar and only 5 g of fat, $2.85. It declares Milk and no wheat, which makes it the one gluten-free sweet on the shelf, though Starbucks does not certify it.

• Best for: a child, or a gluten-free order.
• Nutrition tip: the most sugar on the shelf; it is a candy bar in shape and in numbers.

The Vanilla Biscotti with Almonds is a twice-baked vanilla cookie with almonds, 200 calories, 10 g of sugar, 5 g of protein, $2.15. It is built to be dipped and it is the cheapest sweet on the shelf.

• Best for: dunking in a Caffè Americano or a cappuccino.

SkinnyDipped coats whole almonds in a thin layer of chocolate or yogurt, so most of the calories come from the nut rather than the coating. The SkinnyDipped Dark Chocolate Cocoa Almonds are 170 calories with 5 g of protein and 5 g of sugar at $3.25. The SkinnyDipped Lemon Bliss Almonds swap the chocolate for a lemon yogurt coat, and the SkinnyDipped Coconut Almond Bite is a single 80 calorie piece for $1.65.

• Why choose them: the least sugar of any sweet snack, with protein and fiber from the almonds.
• Best for: a sweet bite on a low-sugar day, or a snack with a Refresher.

The packaged sweets are smaller and lighter than anything in the pastry case. A Chocolate Chip Cookie from the case is 370 calories; the three madeleines together are 220, the biscotti 200, and a bag of dark chocolate almonds 170. The trade is freshness: the case items are baked that morning and the shelf items are sealed with a shelf life of weeks.

That shelf life is the point for a lot of customers. A pack of madeleines or a bag of almonds goes into a work bag and gets eaten over two days, which a warm cookie does not survive. For a treat right now the case wins; for a treat later the shelf does.

Two of them are close. The SkinnyDipped almonds are mostly nut, with 5 g of protein and 5 g of sugar in a bag, and the biscotti is a small, dry cookie with 10 g. The marshmallow bar is candy, and the madeleines are butter cake. None of them needs to be avoided; the question is how often, and the almonds are the one that fits a daily habit.

Protein is thin across the shelf apart from the almonds, and fiber is close to nil on everything but the nuts. Treat these as a sweet finish to a coffee, not a snack that holds you until dinner; the bar shelf next to it is where the protein lives.

The coconut almond bite is the smallest thing you can buy at Starbucks. The full SkinnyDipped bags are the better value and still under 200 calories with single-digit sugar.

• Madeleines with a Caffè Latte.
• Biscotti with an Americano or a Cappuccino, dipped.
• Marshmallow Dream Bar with a hot chocolate, for a child.
• SkinnyDipped almonds with a cold brew or an iced tea.
• Coconut almond bite with an espresso shot, the two-minute version.
• Lemon Bliss almonds with a green tea; the yogurt coating and the tea suit each other.
• For a child, the marshmallow bar and a Horizon milk box; for an adult who wants the same thing, the madeleines and a hot chocolate.

The madeleines and biscotti declare wheat, egg and milk where listed; the marshmallow bar declares milk; the SkinnyDipped products contain almonds and, in the lemon version, dairy yogurt. All are sold sealed.