Homemade Capuccino 


No, that's not picture of a cup of coffee that I took from a Starbucks outlet near my house. Woke up this morning, saw some milk left in the fridge. I was recalling how much I really missed that capuccino machine that Sam bought back in Brisbane. I still remember, I would wake up and head straight for the coffee machine. Nothing like starting the day with a nice cuppa. Making your own capuccino really did save you some money and I liked mine without nutmeg or cinnamon. It had a decent pressure to create good quality froth. Not bad for a machine that cost A$35.00. That's after 20% discount, on top of a 15% store discount! I can't believe it! They actually give discount to employees on top of the offer price! How do they make money? Are they suggesting that they are making a good 50% of the shelf price? Who knows?

Anyway, I still remember the first time we tried to operate the darn thing. Being guys, we didn't opted for the manual. We went for the old fashioned 'Plug and Play'. Simple, or so we thought. We didn't exactly know how much water to put in, so we filled it halfway to just run a trial and error thingy. Kids, don't ever try this at home. Now, the water in the machine boils, so that you can filter hot water through the grounded coffee. You get a nice selection of different flavors, Mountain Blue, Kenyan Gold and Irish coffee (there's Kahlua or Baileys mixed into the beans as they are roasted), just to name a few.

Well, the remaining water is needed to froth and steam the milk. Well, Sam being the genius thought that we should just fill up the water halfway. After the water is used to filter the coffee, there wasn't enough left to steam the milk. He just opened the water chamber and forgetting that it was pressurized the thing just went pop! It was quite scary and Ann (my housemate from Germany) said, "Told you so!" Yea, she was right, we should ALWAYS read the manual before operating complicating machinery. Luckily the cover didn't pop into Sam's eye or something. I spent the next 5 minutes going through the manual and there in fine print at the end of the page, "Warning: Do not open cover when the water chamber is empty. Allow the chamber to depressurize before opening."

What can I say? Guys will be guys!

Now back to the coffee I made this morning. Getting the froth was actually quite easy without the help of a machine. All you need is to heat up the milk, and then pour it into a small bottle. After that, give it a good shake. A word of advice, don't forget to wrap a cloth around the bottle, otherwise it can get really hot. After a minute or two, you'll have all the froth that you want without the help of a coffee machine! Who says you can't learn anything from a cook chef named Jamie? And how much milk do you use? Equal parts of coffee and milk. Unless you are making a Latte then you'll need one part coffee and two parts milk.

And no, the cup wasn't stolen from a local Starbucks outlet! Although I know that they don't sell this particular cup with the logo that they use in the coffeeshops. I managed to get 3 of these mugs back from Brisbane. They sell it for A$7 each! What a rip off, I should've just gone and knicked one.