The Best Nonmilk Cappuccino EVER!
A thing of beauty, no?
I’m so excited (or maybe it’s a caffeine buzz)! But I just made the best cappuccino I’ve ever had in my life (see above- I was so happy I took a damn picture of it).
I recently bought a Bialetti Mukka glass cappuccino maker from Williams Sonoma after looking for a stovetop latte/capp maker for ages.
Why stovetop? I don’t want another hunk of metal sitting on my countertop that sucks electricity from the plug. And those plug-in machines are expensive! The glass Mukka was $99 (the metal one is only $89). And I knew they lasted forever since my dad has his that he bought in Italy over 30 years ago. But I could never find one in the States (the stovetop espresso-only machines were easy to find, but I wanted to be able to steam milk too).
The glass Bialetti latte/cappuccino maker
I guess they’ve just started importing them and I snapped one up as soon as I heard they were available. Then I swung by Whole Foods at Columbus Circle in NYC (my shoe repair place is practically next door) for some delicious organic espresso beans.
I don’t really drink milk, and while I do enjoy soy milk, I also eat tofu on a pretty regular basis; on the advice of my holistic health nutritionist, Cynthia Stadd, I’ve been trying to mix my milk subs up with rice, soy/rice blends, almond and most recently, hemp milks. Having tried rice, soy and hemp milks in my new little capp maker, let me wholeheartedly endorse Living Harvest hempmilk as making the creamiest, richest, closest-to-cow’s-juice froth of the three.
I’m a huge fan of hemp products as you can read here and here, but other hemp milks (unless they were chocolate, or mixed with cereal) were a little strongly flavored for me. But this stuff is creamy, not ‘hempy’, and packed with Omega 3’s and 6’s. Cut the sugar by choosing original which is unsweetened. You can always add agave for a mellow sweetener if you really need it.
Yum Yum!
With some organic cinnamon and nutmeg on top and a square of fair-trade Endangered Species dark chocolate in the bottom, this is a serious afternoon treat for only about 160 calories.
Starre Vartan
Starre Vartan is founder and editor-in-chief of Eco-Chick.com and the author of the Eco-Chick Guide to Life. She's also a freelance science and environment writer who has published in National Geographic, CNN, Scientific American, Mental Floss, Pacific Standard, the NRDC, and many more. She lives on an island in Puget Sound with her partner and black cat. She was a geologist in her first career, and still picks up rocks wherever she goes.
