How to Make Designs in Coffee Drinks

Coffee has changed character from just the morning pick-me-up to being a social thing that has to occur at a trendy espresso stand. One of the things that is not so bad about this change is that many new types of drinks have been created and enjoyed by people that don't normally drink coffee. Spice up that cup with a beautiful design on the top of the cup.

Things You'll Need

• Toothpick or other pointed tool
• Decorative strainer
• Powdered sugar, cocoa, cinnamon
• Sauces in squeeze bottles: chocolate, caramel, strawberry

Instructions

1. Pour up a cup of coffee or, better yet, espresso. Add to the cup some fresh steamed milk, leaving a bit of white milk foam in the center of the cup. The foam becomes the canvas for a coffee artist. There are many ways to create a piece of artwork on the top of that cup.

2. Take a strainer that has a decorative design of holes and place it over the cup. Tap a shaker that contains cocoa powder or cinnamon onto the strainer so that the powder goes through the holes and lands on the top of the foam. Use this same technique on a cup of coffee and steamed milk and is a uniform brown color by using powdered sugar or vanilla sugar, which will leave a white design.

3. Take a small pointed utensil like a toothpick and draw it into and out of the white foam region to form a design. Draw the toothpick into the white region from the corners of a five-pointed star. Draw the tip of the toothpick from the edge of the foam to the center of the foam. Now repeat the procedure by drawing from the center of the foam to beyond the outside edge of the foam region. This second time, be sure to draw the toothpick between each of the other lines that you have already placed in the foam. The foam now looks like there is a five-petal flower in the top of the cup.

4. Add chocolate or caramel syrup to the procedure above to produce designs that have more color than just the foam and coffee. Adding one of these syrups to the foam region as a shape or simply a circle will add complexity to the designs that you can make.