Erin Meister trains baristas for North Carolina-based Counter Culture Coffee and sporadically maintains the blog Meet the Press Pot from her home in New York City. This is the fifth in a series of tips for the caffeine-addicted.
Baristas are getting increasingly used to people describing their morning fix as "too pretty to drink," and not only because it's their first caffeine of the day. Latte art, a particular way a barista will "fold" steamed milk into espresso to create a heart or a leaf-like design called a rosetta on a drink, has been mesmerizing café goers (and even the baristas themselves) for years, but it's still seemingly a work of magic to most.
Well, I don't want to burst any (milk) bubbles, but latte art isn't magic, it's skill -- well, skill and a little abracadabra. The former because it can take months or even years to master the intuitive art of marrying two liquids, and the latter because a great latte artist can disguise not-great coffee under a stylish surface.
A video of how it's done after the jump!
As a brief illustration of how latte art's achieved and how it can be sneaky-deaky, I whipped up this little informative video, just for you guys:
I mean, not that any of us have ever been fooled by a pretty face before ...
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