Travel with Angela Lansbury: Pictures on your coffee froth! Portraits On your birthday cake

I went to the FHA HoReCa show at Expo and they had a whole hall devoted to baking, pastries and coffee. At one coffee stand I met Geoffrey Lee on the Gaggia Milano stand, an Italian coffee maker stand, and he told me about pictures on coffee.

I commented that I had been given a coffee on another stand with a swirl picture on the coffee. Geoffrey told me that there's a machine which can print your own photo onto the surface of your coffee. Not on the cup, onto the coffee.

Coffee Shop Offers

I can foresee coffee shops buying that machine and sending you invitations to come in on your birthday for a coffee with a photo of you in your party clothes. Maybe they will give you a hat to wear with the name of the coffee shop, or the machine.

If you are in the business of running a coffee shop, pop along to the exhibition at Expo. I was surprised by the variety of coffee makers, as well as milks and milk substitute varieties.

Geoffrey works for the EVOCA group, in Singapore, and they deal with not only Gaggia Milano, but also Necta, Saeco, Ducale, Wittenborg, Cafection, SGI and Newis.

For Catered Events, Birthdays & Anniversaries

Meanwhile, you can make pictures on coffee or cakes by buying stencils. On muffins to match you can use powered sugar (in the UK called icing sugar). I bought a photo of myself to go on a birthday cake. You can do this for yourself or as a surprise for a family member, especially for a large event. Ask the caterer. They may be able to do this already but just not advertise the fact, or you might introduce them to a new idea.

DIY Personalised Cake

In the UK I ordered a personalised cake. The picture was great but the cake was not great. Nothing made you want a second slice. The next year I paid for toppings of edible pictures to be added to cakes. Then I bought a Marks & Spencer fruit cake with a white icing top and added the picture on top.

I made a mistake or chose the cheapest option and instead of one large picture got dozens of small ones, muffin size.

So I laid them out in a frame on the cake.

The muffin size pictures were so small that my name and the words happy birthday and the pictures of my latest book and title were tiny and unreadable. For my purpose, including text, the one big picture would have been more suitable.

Pictures from eatyourphoto: