Tag Archives: coffee

Vanilla Molecule Painting

Posted on by

Painting number 14 of the 50 Paintings for 2012 goal, now available as a standard greeting card or museum-quality fine art print– rolled, under glass or on canvas.

Photography Prints

Vanilla is a flavoring derived from orchids of the genus Vanilla, primarily from the Mexican species, Flat-leaved Vanilla (V. planifolia). The word vanilla derives from the Spanish word “vainilla”, little pod. Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican peoples cultivated vanilla and Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes is credited with introducing both vanilla and chocolate to Europe in the 1520s.

Vanilla is the second most expensive spice after saffron, because growing the vanilla seed pods is labor-intensive. Despite the expense, vanilla is highly valued for its flavor, which author Frederic Rosengarten, Jr. described in The Book of Spices as “pure, spicy, and delicate” and its complex floral aroma depicted as a “peculiar bouquet”. As a result, vanilla is widely used in both commercial and domestic baking, perfume manufacture and aromatherapy.

There are three main commercial preparations of natural vanilla: whole pod, powder and extract.

Vanilla flavoring in food may be achieved by adding vanilla extract or by cooking vanilla pods in the liquid preparation. A stronger aroma may be attained if the pods are split in two, exposing more of a pod’s surface area to the liquid. In this case, the pods’ seeds are mixed into the preparation. Natural vanilla gives a brown or yellow color to preparations, depending on the concentration. Good-quality vanilla has a strong aromatic flavor, but food with small amounts of low-quality vanilla or artificial vanilla-like flavorings are far more common, since true vanilla is much more expensive.

A major use of vanilla is in flavoring ice cream. The most common flavor of ice cream is vanilla, and thus most people consider it to be the “default” flavor. By analogy, the term “vanilla” is sometimes used as a synonym for “plain”. Although vanilla is a prized flavoring agent on its own, it is also used to enhance the flavor of other substances, to which its own flavor is often complementary, such as chocolate, custard, caramel, coffee, cakes, and others.

The ice cream and chocolate industries together comprise 75% of the market for vanillin as a flavoring, with smaller amounts being used in confections and baked goods.

The cosmetics industry also uses vanilla to make perfume.

Though there are many compounds present in the extracts of vanilla, the compound vanillin featured in this painting is primarily responsible for the characteristic flavor and smell of vanilla.

(Visit Wikipedia for the complete original article on Vanilla.)

Café au lait Painting

Posted on by

Painting number 8 of the 50 Paintings for 2012 goal, now available as a standard greeting card or museum-quality fine art print– rolled, under glass or on canvas.

Art Prints

Café au lait (coffee with milk”) is a French coffee drink. The meaning of the term differs between Europe and the United States; in both cases it means some kind of coffee with hot milk added, in contrast to white coffee, which is coffee with room temperature milk or other whitener added.

In Europe, “café au lait” stems from the same continental tradition as “café con leche” in Spain, “kawa biała” (“white coffee”) in Poland, “Milchkaffee” (“milk coffee”) in Germany, “koffie verkeerd” (“incorrect coffee”) in The Netherlands, and “café com leite” (“coffee with milk”) in Portugal (and also in the South American country of Brazil). In northern Europe, café au lait is the name most often used in coffee shops.

At home, café au lait can be prepared from dark coffee and heated milk; in cafés, it has been prepared on espresso machines from espresso and steamed milk ever since these machines became available in the 1940s – thus it refers to the usual “coffee + milk” combination, depending on the location, not to a specific drink.

“Café au lait” and “caffè latte” are used as contrasting terms, to indicate whether the beverage is served in the “French” or the “Italian” way – the former being in a white porcelain cup or bowl, the latter in a kitchen glass and always made from an espresso machine, whereas “Café au lait” might be espresso or dark coffee based.

In many American coffeehouses, a “café au lait” is a drink of strong drip brewed or French pressed coffee, to which steamed milk is added; this contrasts with a “caffè latte”, which uses espresso as a base. American café au lait is generally served in a cup, as with brewed coffee, being served in a bowl only at shops which wish to emphasize French tradition.

The term misto (literally, “mixed”) is also used to refer to a café au lait, most notably by Starbucks.

Café au lait in New Orleans has been popularized contemporarily in part by Café du Monde. There, it is made with milk and coffee mixed with chicory, giving it a strong, bitter taste. Unlike the European café style, a New Orleans café au lait is made with scalded milk — milk warmed over heat to just below boiling — rather than steamed milk. Inclusion of roasted chicory root as an extender in coffee became common in colonial Louisiana, and eventually was incorporated as a regular coffee additive. The bitterness of the chicory offsets the sweetness of the powdered-sugar-covered beignets, a common accompaniment.

(Visit Wikipedia for the complete original article on Cafe au Lait.)

Caffeine Molecule Painting

Posted on by

Painting number 4 of the 50 Paintings for 2012 goal, now available as a standard greeting card or museum-quality fine art print– rolled, under glass or on canvas.

Art Prints

“Caffeine Molecule” is the first of a series of mouthwatering paintings depicting the building blocks of favorite foods and flavors. Caffeine is made from carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen.

Caffeine is a bitter, white crystalline xanthine alkaloid that acts as a stimulant drug. It is found in varying quantities in the seeds, leaves, and fruit of some plants, where it acts as a natural pesticide that paralyzes and kills certain insects feeding on the plants. It is most commonly consumed by humans in infusions extracted from the bean of the coffee plant and the leaves of the tea bush, as well as from various foods and drinks containing products derived from the kola nut. Other sources include yerba maté, guarana berries, guayusa, and the yaupon holly.

In humans, caffeine acts as a central nervous system stimulant, temporarily warding off drowsiness and restoring alertness. It is the world’s most widely consumed psychoactive drug, but, unlike many other psychoactive substances, it is both legal and unregulated in nearly all parts of the world. Beverages containing caffeine, such as coffee, tea, soft drinks, and energy drinks, enjoy great popularity; in North America, 90% of adults consume caffeine daily.

Global consumption of caffeine has been estimated at 120,000 tonnes per year, making it the world’s most popular psychoactive substance. This amounts to one serving of a caffeinated beverage for every person every day.

Common sources of caffeine are coffee, tea, and (to a lesser extent) chocolate derived from cocoa beans. Less commonly used sources of caffeine include the yerba maté, guarana and ilex guayusa plants, which are sometimes used in the preparation of teas and energy drinks. Two of caffeine’s alternative names, mateine and guaranine, are derived from the names of these plants.

One of the world’s primary sources of caffeine is the coffee “bean” (which is the seed of the coffee plant), from which coffee is brewed. Caffeine content in coffee varies widely depending on the type of coffee bean and the method of preparation used; even beans within a given bush can show variations in concentration. In general, one serving of coffee ranges from 80–100 milligrams, for a single shot (30 milliliters) of arabica-variety espresso, to approximately 100–125 milligrams for a cup (120 milliliters) of drip coffee. Arabica coffee typically contains half the caffeine of the robusta variety.

In general, dark-roast coffee has very slightly less caffeine than lighter roasts because the roasting process reduces a small amount of the bean’s caffeine content.

Tea is another common source of caffeine. Although tea contains more caffeine than coffee (by dry weight), a typical serving contains much less, as tea is normally brewed much weaker. Besides strength of the brew, growing conditions, processing techniques and other variables also affect caffeine content. Certain types of tea may contain somewhat more caffeine than other teas.

Tea contains small amounts of theobromine and slightly higher levels of theophylline than coffee. Preparation and many other factors have a significant impact on tea, and color is a very poor indicator of caffeine content. Teas like the pale Japanese green tea, gyokuro, for example, contain far more caffeine than much darker teas like lapsang souchong, which has very little.

Caffeine is also a common ingredient of soft drinks, such as cola, originally prepared from kola nuts. Soft drinks typically contain about 10 to 50 milligrams of caffeine per serving. By contrast, energy drinks, such as Red Bull, can start at 80 milligrams of caffeine per serving. The caffeine in these drinks either originates from the ingredients used or is an additive derived from the product of decaffeination or from chemical synthesis. Guarana, a prime ingredient of energy drinks, contains large amounts of caffeine with small amounts of theobromine and theophylline in a naturally occurring slow-release excipient.

Chocolate derived from cocoa beans contains a small amount of caffeine. The weak stimulant effect of chocolate may be due to a combination of theobromine and theophylline, as well as caffeine. A typical 28-gram serving of a milk chocolate bar has about as much caffeine as a cup of decaffeinated coffee, although some dark chocolate currently in production contains as much as 160 mg per 100g.

(Visit Wikipedia for the complete original article on Caffeine.)