Eeeee you guys! I'm so so so excited to be sharing this post with you this week. Okay. So first off I'll introduce this new series. This one's called
House wife life
. It's called
House wife life
because it something I vowed I would never become, a house wife. Lol. I just knew I wanted to work my whole life, and never ever be a stay at home mom. I knew I wanted to be so career oriented and focused, and really did plan on having a stay at home
husband
. LOL Any who, this is a play on that, and funny enough I work from home every day, but still literally cannot cook pasta. So this series will be all kinds of funny tricks that I do in the kitchen, with featured posts of what Justin
actually
cooks, because he's low key amazing.
First up on the menu is lattes. I have a major weakness for lattes and I remember saying once that my goal in life was to make enough money to not feel guilty when buying lattes from Starbucks.
Every day if I so choose....
Becauuuuuuuuse -they're like 6.00 each!! It's insane. I would be in line at the coffee shop fighting with myself saying,
2.00 coffee, or 6.00 latte. Omg obviously coffee. Nope girl, treat yourself,
I'll have a medium vanilla latte for here please.
Every time. It was getting a little bit ridiculous. I remembered that my best friend Allison used to make us lattes when we were in university and I wondered what happened to that machine. I found it!! And was immediately on a mission to make amazing drinks.
After so many trial and errors, frustration, laughter, and a million YouTube videos later, we figured it out. Normally Justin gets on some kind of kick and I just sit back and watch. But this one, I was right in the middle of it. I needed to
A.
Learn how to make amazing lattes.
B.
Make them beautiful. Hahah it's so much harder than you'd think.
It's pretty simple to do, and this machine is great! I knew the steps in making lattes, cappuccinos and expressos weren't hard, I just knew it was hard to find a way to steam milk and make things actually taste good. This machine is super affordable and does the job really well. I thought they would be a zillion dollars, but this exact one is on Amazon for 199.00. That's crazy. Imagine we bought 6.00 every day, how much money that would be. Literally it's just over 30 lattes for this thing to pay for itself.
YOU NEED THIS.
Well,
I
needed this.
First you make sure the back is filled with water. Then, you fill a shot, or 2 shots (comes with both options) with ground beans, and twist it into it's slot on the machine. When the green light is on, it's good to go! Press start and the espresso will pour. I like to fill mine a little over half with coffee, (some people say less, but I don't like it too milky) Then you press the steamer button and wait until the green light clicks. You turn the knob at the top to release all left over water into a glass, then put your pitcher of milk in for steaming/frothing. Let it bubble and steam until the pitcher is almost too hot to hold. Then you're ready to pour. We like to mix in the syrup right now and stir it before we add the milk. When pouring the milk we start low and go high then go back low once we're reaching the end, finishing with some little design.
That's it.
We started with just the basics, the machine, ground coffee and milk. But, within one week and Justin's Amazon Prime, we now have a full coffee shop set up in the house. We ordered specific espresso coffee, milk frothing pitcher and flavoured syrup. It really did make a difference and helped with most of the things we were struggling with. The flavour we nailed bang on with a touch of the syrup we bought. (Both vanilla and salted caramel) And steaming the milk and pouring helps a lot with the right pitcher. We used coffee pods at the beginning because they seemed easier, these ones were definitely easier because of no clean up, but the taste I didn't love so much. I really like the Kicking Horse Espresso and a few others that I'll link below.
I'm no coffee expert, but definitely plan to be here soon. I know what I like and I know what I hate, but I don't quite know why I love or hate the specifics I do. Justin definitely likes to ground his beans before making his, but I am lazy and prefer using already ground beans. They both taste pretty much the same to me. I also was complaining about how I couldn't take my latte to go, so we solved that problem with disposable cups with lids. Hahah. Also linked below.
Latte art is the absolute hardest. I would literally like someone to formally teach me. We watched so many YouTube videos and these baristas have talent! We haven't totally nailed this part, but we cheat and use a toothpick for manipulating the milk, it's easier ;) Haha
All the links for everything we ordered are below! If you have any tips on latte art, send them to me!!! I must become an expert on this!!
xx
Allie