One of Alexa Baehr's coffee designs.
Alexa Baehr pours espresso at Louisa's Bakery (and sounds like she does lots of other things there as well). Her signature is a bear design done in a latte's foam.
Baehr, who's been in the coffee business since she was a teenager, says there are two ways to do designs in coffee: pouring and etching. She figured out how to do the bears a couple of years ago. She starts by pouring two back-to-back heart shapes, then uses the skinny end of a thermometer to etch the designs. Pretty cool!
Baehr also makes purses and totebags out of old coffee bags (her MySpace page is here) and sells them at Trabant Coffee and Chai in the U District and at the Burke Museum. Photos of her work are here.
