Spherification has been a thing in fine dining for years, largely down to the brilliant minds at elBulli, but now mere mortals are getting in on the act, by creating their own coffee caviar.
Coffee caviar has been popping up on Instagram, largely as a decoration for desserts. The process of spherification is actually fairly simple: you add a small amount of sodium alginate to the liquid you wish to manipulate and then drop it into water containing a similarly small amount of calcium chloride. The resulting chemical reaction creates a membrane around the drops of liquid, giving you amazing caviar-like spheres that burst in the mouth.
The video below from molecularrecipes.com shows you exactly how to do it. For sure, this might take a few goes to get right, but imagine how impressed everyone will be when you serve these little liquid centred flavour bombs to them – not just coffee, you could use this for anything.