Making your own latte

Latte is is coffee topped up with steamed and frothed milk . This is a current favourite hot drink. It is a drink you can make at home even without any expensive coffee machines. You do need to buy a frother, preferably a stainless steel one because glass ones tend to break easily. You also need a small cafetiera and some fresh ground coffee, unless you wish to use instant coffee of your choice which is fine too. You could also use a small home expresso boiler(the screw top ones you use on a stove), for which you need expresso powder. Choose milk of your choice.

As you repeat the steps for making a latte, over and over again you will be able to do this really quickly.

1) Start by pouring boiling water into a cafetiera of fresh ground coffee powder.Use 1 tablespoon of coffee powder/person, and 1 small mug of boiling water /person. I normally use 2 of each in a small 3 person cafetiera so i can make a latte for another person too or have 2 myself. You need to wait 4 minutes before you press down the coffee plunger into the cafetiera

2)After pouring water into the cafetiera, get a mug of milk into your microwave on top temperature for 3 minutes or slightly more till the mug feels real hot on touch and has a film on it.

3)Now carefully and gently pour the milk into the frother and start frothing the milk for a few seconds.Once you see that there are plenty of bubbles and the milk has frothed, get the frother plunger out. Next gently start tapping the frother on one side till you see the bigger bubbles breaking into smaller thicker ones. This creates a layer of very concentrated thick froth. gently stir a tablespoon in this.

4)Now pour your coffee to about half the tallness of your mug and stir in sugar/honey if needed.Using the tablespoon gently pour the frothed milk in. For cappucino sprinkle some chocholate powder over. As you keep practising this, and , observe how this is done when you are in a coffee shop, you will slowly perfect the technique.

Tips:1) Try using muscovado sugar for a deep mysterious flavour. 2)You can flavour your latte by adding some crushed pods of cardamon or cloves or cinnamon or vanilla powder to your coffee powder in the cafetiera. 3)Get your milk really hot, and even pour hot water in all your utensils before you start using them, to end up with a steaming hot latte that will last a while. 4) At the bottom of your frother is where the unfrothed hot milk will be.Thats why you need a tablespoon to get this in too, or else you will end up with only froth on your coffee. This cools down quickly and you end up with a mug that is real light as all the air bubbles out leaving you with hardly any latte. All these are common problems made by staff of coffee shops all over town. I even have to tell them to ‘scald’ my milk to avoid them from serving me a semi cold latte.

I am a coffee lover myself, and I know how enjoyable it is to indulge in a few lattes or go on a latte cafe crawl,(instead of getting drunk in a pub) and am aware that it can be a strain on the wallet. Hence at Take5 we have kept our latte prices very low and do ask me to give you a free latte making demo the next time you drop in, if you are interested.

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