When I was in high school, I spent a couple years working as a barista, and I had never even heard of latte art. It might be because I grew up in Idaho, or maybe I’m just too old and was a barista before latte art was a thing. Either way, I thought it would be a piece of cake to mimic this coffee art onto a cookie. Turns out, it was much harder than I anticipated!
Making the Cookies
Before starting on this design, I looked at a lot of images, but also watched a video of how to physically create latte art. Obviously, foam technique is going to be quite a bit different than royal icing technique. But doing a little research can be helpful to get an idea of the physics behind how the art is formed. Because foam, espresso, and milk are all very fluid, my first inclination when making these cookies was to use a very thin icing. But once I tried a few, I felt as though the icing was too thin to control. It kept spreading everywhere and looked rough to me. So I thickened up all the icing colors, and tried again. I thought the result was better, but looking back, maybe not so much.
Icing Consistency
Thin Icing
These latte cookies were made with thin icing, about the consistency of egg nog. The thin icing gave me the “fluid” look I wanted, but the icing was hard to control to keep it in the correct shape.
Thick(er) Icing
This cookie was made with a thicker icing, somewhere between a 20-second consistency and a flood consistency. You can see that the shape is more defined, but I probably could have spent more time
Constructing the Latte
Once they dried, they definitely had a more “coffee” look to them. When using thin icing and layering it wet on wet, the colors bleed a bit into each other and do not leave clean lines. This is usually undesirable, but great for some applications, like these cookies. This guy would look better with a little more blending with the light brown into the dark brown. But at the time it was a little hard to see when it was wet and shiny.
Overall, these cookies were not my best work. I look forward to trying them again sometime, but for now I have too many other cookie projects that are tugging at my attention. If I try it again, I’ll be sure to keep you “posted.” 🙂
Happy baking everyone!
