How to Make Coffee Caviar?

Photo of Food & Wine Magazine

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.

This piece of kit called the Imperial Sphericator, is also another great way to get started with spherification at home.

Take a look at how people have been using coffee caviar to liven up desserts and savoury dishes below. Also, further down is a video from ChefSteps showing you how to make chocolate caviar. The possibilities, seemingly, are endless.

By FDL