My Coffee Art

Wasn't really much of a coffee junkie. In fact, coffee seldom crossed my mind apart from the once a week buy-one-free-one San Francisco Extreme drink series with my "San Fran" buddy back then. After leaving to work in another organization, I lost touch with my buy-one-free-one extreme latte and got introduced to this new thing called Irish latte instead. New for me that is.

It was like a drug that got me hooked at the very instant and had me going back for more. Up to a point where it aroused my curiosity and had me wondering what lies inside that cup of espresso or latte or cappuccino. I began to develop an interest in coffee which I never thought I would have. And so I started looking out for coffee joints, to satisfy that craving and that certain curiosity.

It was from a few of these places that I discovered these cute little illustrations that they put on top of your coffee drink. Hearts, ferns, spider webs, leaves, bears, rabbits and anything which you can think of. It was just adorable. And it became an "in" thing. All of a sudden people are talking about them. The more I looked at them, the more interested I got. If someone is able to create them, well I bet I would be able to do so too. So after a little digging, I found out that they are called coffee art.

Coffee arts

There weren't many places that offered such classes. Most would require you to take up a basic barista course first. However, I finally did manage to find this place, which offers coffee appreciation, latte art and various other coffee related workshops, run by 2 fun loving coffee enthusiasts. 

And so I went on to sign up for a latte art workshop and got a crash course about it. All in a span of 2 hours, I was introduced to terms like milk frosting, etching, tilting. And I got to watch out for boiling temperatures and to measure in ounces and how to tell if the coffee is freshly brewed. For someone who doesn't really cook, god knows how I survived that 2 hours. Hate to say this, but most of the time I got through with lucky guesses. Hah!

my teacher monitoring my pouring

some of the failed attempts

managed to get a "heart" right

a few more tries

"tilt it more"....like this...

and finally....ta-daa...

yes, I did it!

Actually they were not the patterns that I had initially wanted to make. Albeit not really perfect but I still managed to create something reasonable out of it. Kudos to my teachers! 

So what's next? Practice more and perfect the art!