Ah, the Rosetta. That beautiful, balanced, delicate and complex design that you often see on the top of your Latte. We call it a Rosetta, not a Christmas tree or fern, and it is done with just a flick of the wrist. There are no tools, stamps, or tricks involved. Just a learned method and lots of practice. Now that you have mastered perfect milk, I'll show you how to pour it.
Photos By Gimme! Staff
Start with your textured (and polished) milk and a shot of espresso. The first part of of pouring is getting your milk to go under the crema of the shot without disturbing it too much. I tilt the cup slightly towards my pitcher to create a deeper pool to pour into.
Then get your pitcher as close to the rim of your cup as you can without dumping the milk all over the place.
Once you are ready to pour into your shot, do so with force! I think of punching it trough, or aiming for the bottom of cup. The goal is to get under the top layer of your shot. By lifting up the back of your pitcher, therefore having a steep angle you are pouring from, you will achieve enough force.
After the initial punch of milk you want to slow things way down so that you preserve the top layer, and therefore the color, of your espresso. Nice latte art is all about contrast, so preserving the color is very important. Too much mixing and your entire drink will be a dull brown. You slow things down by lowering the back of your pitcher, and decreasing the rate your milk is flowing out.
Once you are nearing the lip of your cup, bring the tip of your pitcher as close to the rising surface of your drink as you can. Also, now is the time to move the point of your pitcher to the far side of your cup to start laying down art.
Really get the point of your pitcher down into the cup. I've been known to even clink the pitcher on the rim! Once you are close to the surface and at the far side of your cup start a gentle wiggling motion with your wrist. Keep this motion very gentile, just using your fingers. The force of your wrist of arm is not necessary.
You will start to see ribbons of white floating on the surface of your drink. This is the start of your rosetta! Keep wiggling very gently and slowly start to move back towards the neer side of your cup.
Keep your wiggle constant and your pull back slow. You should not be letting out very much milk at this point and you have plenty of time to create many layers in your design.
Keep pulling back to the edge of the cup. The further back you can go without overflowing, the more full and layered your design will be. Then you pull you steam of milk back trough your design towards the opposite side of the cup with a very gentle stream of milk. This pulls all the layers of the leaves together.
There you have it: one rosetta. A true classic, they are always beautiful and never perfect. Don't loose hope if you overflow or your design is flawed. Just keep practicing and enjoying all the delicious mistakes.
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