Barissimo French Vanilla Cappuccino Drink Mix Single Serve Cups

Last Updated on November 7, 2022

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I used to work at a newspaper that had a coffee vending machine in the kitchen break room. While vending machine coffee sounds less than delicious, one day when I was running on fumes while editing copy, I got desperate and bought a cup of French vanilla cappuccino from that machine. It was surprisingly good. During my years working there, I ended up buying more cheap cappuccinos from that machine than I might care to admit.

I’ve never been a big coffee person, but I’ve always liked vanilla cappuccino. Cappuccino is a coffee drink with an espresso base mixed with hot milk or cream, and when it’s made properly at a coffee shop it’s also topped with foamed milk. I’ve bought it everywhere from coffee shops to gas stations over the years, and its generous amounts of milk or cream help to sweeten the bitter coffee flavor.

I recently bought a single-serve coffee maker from Aldi to use with hot chocolate pods (also purchased at Aldi) and Keurig K-Cup tea pods (purchased at a regular grocery store). While browsing the coffee and hot chocolate pods at Aldi, I noticed they carry their own brand of cappuccino pods, so I picked up some French vanilla cappuccino cups to try. Aldi also sells some caramel cappuccino pods — which I did not buy — alongside the vanilla ones in a mixed case. These are sold under the Barissimo brand, which is not a separate company but rather is the Aldi private label for coffee products.

Barissimo French Vanilla Cappuccino Drink Mix cost $3.89 for a box of twelve 0.53-ounce cups at the time of publication. That comes out to about 32 cents per serving. For comparison, a 12-count box of Walmart brand Great Value cappuccino pods costs about 36 cents per serving at the time of writing, while an Original Donut Shop 12-count box of cappuccino cups costs about 83 cents per serving at Walmart, and a 12-count box of Gevalia cappuccino K-Cups from Walmart costs about $1.14 per serving. That makes the Aldi cups the best deal, and they’re even a slightly better bargain than Walmart brand cups.

The Aldi cappuccino pods are a Regular Buy, so you should be able to find them at Aldi any time of year.

The box states these cups are compatible with Keurig K-Cup brewers, but these are not affiliated with Keurig Green Mountain Inc., the maker of the popular K-Cup coffee pods. The front of the box also mentions these are 2.0 brewer compatible.

Nutrition information and ingredients. (Click to enlarge.)

These contain a good number of processed ingredients, which coffee purists may not appreciate, but I’m not surprised considering this a shelf-stable concentrated drink mix that comes in a little plastic cup. I also noticed that while this is primarily sweetened with sugar, it also contains a small amount of the artificial sweetener sucralose, which is listed second to last among the ingredients.

Ingredients are: corn syrup solids, sugar, coconut oil, instant coffee, maltodextrin, salt, sodium caseinate, natural and artificial flavor, cocoa (processed with alkalai), dipotassium phosphate, silicon dioxide, mono- and diglycerides, sucralose, and cellulose gum.

These are kosher. If you are concerned about allergens, these contain milk.

One single serve cup (15 grams) has 70 calories, 4 grams of total fat (5% DV), 3.5 grams of saturated fat (18% DV), 170 mg of sodium (7% DV), 9 grams of total carbohydrates (3% DV), 5 grams of total sugars, and 4 grams of added sugars (8% DV).

An Aldi cappuccino cup next to my mug.

The box has brewing instructions. For the classic cup, load a single-serve cup into your single-serve coffee machine. Choose the desired cup size, and brew according to the machine instructions. For best results, the box recommends brewing on an 8-ounce setting.

You can also make iced coffee using the same instructions as above, except using a 6-ounce setting. (The Aldi single-serve coffee machine does not have a 6-ounce setting, but you can stop the machine when you get the amount you want.) Let the cappuccino cool and pour it over ice. Add sugar and cream to taste.

The cups are recyclable once they have cooled off.

Eight ounces of freshly brewed cappuccino.

I made this using the 8-ounce setting on my Ambiano Single Serve Coffee Maker. It was easy to make and tasted like what I expect vanilla cappuccino to taste like. It has a creamy, slightly bitter coffee flavor and just the right amount of sweetness without being too sweet. I often find that processed coffee drinks — and even drinks from places like Starbucks — are sweeter than necessary. While this is still fairly sweet, I thought it was better than a lot of other coffee or latte drinks I’ve tried. It may have a faint sucralose aftertaste, but I’m not sure I would have guessed it contains artificial sweetener if I hadn’t read it on the ingredients list.

These are a good choice if you like cappuccino and are looking for a way to make it using a single-serve coffee maker.

The Verdict:

Barissimo French Vanilla Cappuccino Drink Mix features 12 single-serve cups that are compatible with Keurig machines or with the Aldi Ambiano Single-Serve Coffee Maker. It’s pretty processed, but that comes with the territory when you’re making coffee with plastic pods. We were also surprised to see that this is sweetened with some sucralose in addition to regular sugar, although the sucralose is pretty far down in the ingredients list. Overall, this makes cappuccino that tastes pretty good and is flavorful but not too sweet.