Cappucino one of my daughters favourites. Whenever we are out and about shopping she can’t resist the little tea shop in the village square, with its comfortable leather sofas and mock farmhouse setting, to enjoy a gigantic piece of the cake of the day and a large cup of cappucino. Its her little treat she loves it! Besides browsing through the handcrafted jewellry on display within.

I know with her love of cappucino I knew the perfect gift for her would be the La Cafetiere Mukka Express - silver edition. Why because its easy, simple and it does it all for you in one, no mess spread everywhere and then it serves a cappucino as you would get in the finest coffee house.

The Mukka Express, by Bialetti, is the first stove top cappuccino maker of it`s kind. The Lucida is a stylish all silver design that will look good in any kitchen. The new Mukka Express is the first, fully patented ‘Stove-Top Cappuccino’ maker. It combines the traditional stove-top style of coffee maker with a large size pot for holding the milk. Place the water in the bottom section, coffee in the middle and fill the top section to the maker with milk. Then place on the stove-top and as the water boils to make the coffee, the resulting steam is passed through the milk to froth it. Ideal for 2 mugs of cappuccino or caf latte.

Find some great recipes in my previous blog taking the biscuit, or even classic recipe for victoria samdwich blog, oh and not forgetting the blog on quick homemade teatime treats.

Whats your favourite tea, coffee or are your a expresso person? Whats your favourite side with your coffee or tea, is it a cake or biscuit and do you know the difference?

Well have you a coffee fanatic in the house? We all have our likes and dislikes. Traditionally speaking we usually enjoy coffee morning and tea in the afternoon. I have family members who only drink coffee and compete with each other on the lastest gadget, gismo and machine.

So finding this all intriging we set a challenge to blindfold 4 of us to see if we could taste the difference between the coffee’s with 4 non advid coffee fans as such and well the results are interesting.

We took 4 people 2 men and 2 women, all drink coffee, tea and water on a regular basis daily. Being logical my brother in law Mark and me made up a coffee pot on the stove with ground beans, we put on a cheaper range coffee perculator, we made a cup of instant coffee from a popular brand and we used 2 different coffee machines. This gave us 5 different black coffee’s.

Whats surprised us all was how the, not so coffee drinkers all picked out the coffee machine coffees has the best in flavour and richness. So Mark was over joyed as a avid coffee drinker that his gismo won top marks in our dedicated testing.

Marks best gismo is the Krups Compact Espresseria EA8080 Bean to Cup Coffee Machine. Some how Krups have managed to shrink the coffee shop down to a small shiny black cube of coffee making genius. The Compact Espresseria EA8080 has all the convenience of a capsule coffee maker, but the skills to turn whole beans into fresh espresso.

Bean-to-cup coffee machines usually tower over your sideboard because they have to incorporate a grinder as well as storage for the beans and water, but the German engineers at Krups have managed to miniaturise the whole process with the dinky Espresseria machine. Although small, it can generate 15 bar of pump pressure and hold 1.8 litres of water, while the blue LCD display lets you choose between Esspresso, Lungo, Cappuccino or Latte. There’s even room to warm two cups on top.

The EA8080 is also supplied with a Krups welcome pack which contains a Claris water filter, two sachets of descaling crystals, two cleaning tablets, a water hardness test strip and of course, the instruction manual.

So to sum up its features are:

• Bean to Cup
• LCD Display
• 1.8 Litre water tank capacity
• 15 Bar Pressure
• Metallic Conical Burr grinder for precise and uniform grinding
• 1450W
• Stainless Steel Milk jug and XS6000 Auto Cappuccino Maker
• New easy ‘Touch and Turn’ dial
• New piano black finish
• Compact Thermoblock System for optimum temperature at the very first cup
• Temperature adjuster for perfect bitterness and aroma result
• Automatic Rinsing/Cleaning/Descaling programmes
• Includes Claris water filter, 2 cleaning tablets, descaling crystals, water hardness test strip
• 275g Bean hopper capacity
• Cup Warming Tray
• Height 365mm x Length 330mm x Width 245mm
• 2 Year Manufacturer Warranty 

Why not tell us about your favourite coffee bean for the perfect coffee? Send in your argument for tea versus coffee.

See my blogs take your drinks outside in style, tea leaf or tea bag there is one teapot for every mum, and home made sweets make a great gift to name but a few for you to read over.