Posts Tagged ‘Coffee Maker’
5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Morning Coffee
Many coffees on the market today come with added flavors, which is not the way to go if your want the best tasting cup of coffee. For some reason, beans that are infused with flavors never seem to taste right and are always a bit artificial. The flavoring often serves as a means of masking the subpar quality of the beans.
If you want some extra flavor in your coffee, go the extra mile and use premium ingredients. Personally, I love the taste of fresh vanilla or real chocolate in my concoctions I brew up in my cappuccino makers. Adding real, fresh ingredients not only tastes better, it’s healthier for you too.
Most people have enough difficultly choosing roasted coffee beans from their local grocery store to use in their cappuccino makers; and as you can imagine, selecting green, unroasted beans can be even harder. Making distinctions between beans with nothing but your eyes isn’t effective, so your best bet is to simply try out a variety of unroasted coffee beans from around the globe until you find a flavor profile you like. This may sound like an arduous undertaking, but most suppliers have some sort of sampler option which allows you to try an assortment of coffees without blowing your budget or doing months of research.
The beans are certainly an important part of the equation, but coffee drinkers know that the roast is a main determinant in the flavor. The more you roast the coffee, the more you detract from the natural coffee flavors. This is one of the biggest benefits of roasting your own beans; the fact that you can cater the roast to your distinct preferences.
My sister-in-law’s wedding is coming up this weekend and I’ve spent hours poring over their various registries in search of the perfect gift. It’s hard to find a balance between buying a generic gift—which nearly everything on the registry is—and getting something personal. I know that both she and her fiancé love coffee, so I decided to go with the premium espresso machine from one of the dozens of stores they were registered.
I didn’t want to simply give them the machine however, so I’ve decided to add a basket full of coffee goodies as well. My husband and I went online and purchased a selection of exotic blends from around the globe, which we know they’ll appreciate. We’re coffee aficionados in our own right, so we took the liberty of picking up a few treats for ourselves.
Drinking piping hot coffee in the dead of summer is an unattractive proposition even for us coffee addicts up here in Seattle. But when I was looking for iced coffee recipes recently, I found that many of them called for dehydrated coffee crystals…what is this nonsense? Just because you’re drinking an iced coffee beverage doesn’t mean you should sacrifice quality and flavor. For my fellow coffee connoisseurs out there, here’s a delicious iced cappuccino recipe from The Food Network that’s sure to please:
Begin by brewing three ounces of espresso in your cappuccino maker. Fill a fixing glass with ice cubes and pour in the espresso. Once the coffee has cooled, strain out the ice cubes and add 3 to 4 ounces of cold milk to the espresso. Use the steam wand on your machine to create a tight microfoam; add to the beverage. You can enhance the drink your own garnishes or extra flavoring—I prefer some vanilla and almond extracts.
When you’re pregnant, sometimes it can feel like you can’t do any of the things you like anymore. After all, all sorts of things are off limits for you. You can’t drink. You can’t smoke. If you’re far enough along, you can’t even fly. Depending on the advice of your doctor and the beliefs of the mother, some women even cut out their daily fix of caffeine. This means that for nine months, they go without any coffee. For true java addicts, that’s quite a feat.
If you find that after you have the kid, and you no longer miss coffee, that’s great. You can live free of your morning cup. But there are just as many people that get through the pregnancy fantasizing about that first latte they’re going to have once they get home from the hospital. If you know somebody like this, consider getting them an espresso coffee maker as a “welcome home” present from the hospital.