I have no idea what I'm doing (cappuccino)

I have ranted about coffee before, or rather the lack of critical sense with many coffee drinkers. But there is a reason people have gotten used to drinking mediocre coffee.
It's extremely difficult to make it good.

Read on to see me trying to make cappuccino!




There is a reason I drink more tea than coffee. It's easier to make yourself. It's far simpler to make extremely good tea than extremely good coffee. I mean, I have even successfully made my own tea from scratch!

But a good coffee... I'll be honest about this... A damn good cup of coffee beats tea of similar quality.

And like I said a few months back, when I posted my peppermint tea project, it is possible to get good coffee in the various coffee bars. You may have to sift through all the average stuff, but most of the time you will get something that's drinkable.

I'm more of a fan of the cappuccino than the black coffee. I like my foamed milk. Who doesn't?
The thing about cappuccino though, and most of the coffee you get in coffee bars, is that it's made using extremely expensive machines. They cost far too much for it to be any sense in getting one for your home, no matter how much money you have.
So naturally, when I want to make a cup of cappuccino, I have to think differently.

The thing I can't do anything about is how the coffee is made. I have roasted coffee beans that I grind up using an electric coffee grinder, and then I use a press pot to make the coffee. This makes for good coffee, but not necessarily what you'd want for the cappuccino - which I believe uses espresso coffee.

So I'm just brewing extra strong coffee. I have no idea what I'm doing lol!
Strong coffee on the left, heated cup for cappuccino on the right.

Ok, but the foamed/steamed milk.. In the past, I have tried to be creative, just boiling milk and whipping it at the same time. But today, there's a new tool in the kitchen. This little thing!

It heats the milk, while whipping it. The technology these days...

And it works, that's the weirdest thing. You get a good portion of milk that's just creamy and heated, and you also get a good part that's extremely foamy. I'm not sure if it came off in the pictures.

Now, do I start with the milk or the coffee? I don't know. I started with the milk, because I had ambitions of making a coffee heart in the foam.

Can you see the heart?

Tasted good. The best cappuccino I drank today.
Definitely a better result than when I made the foam in the more old fashioned way. But still not as good as I'd get in a coffee bar.