Pure Dark Drinking Chocolate
Winter morning drinking chocolate made with 92% Pure Dark Chocolate and topped with Pure Ground Vanilla Powder, cayenne and cinnamon!
What is Drinking Chocolate?
The terms hot cocoa, hot chocolate and drinking chocolate all get thrown around when people are talking about their favorite winter beverages, and that can cause some understandable confusion.
The titles are used interchangeably, but generally the rule of thumb is that just add hot water or dairy packets of dutch-processed cocoa powder, sugar and powdered milk are usually branded as Hot Cocoa or Hot Chocolate, while Drinking Chocolate contains actual, melted chocolate.
What that means is that drinking chocolate is literally hot chocolate. Making it from scratch isn’t too much harder than adding hot water to a packet, and it is exponentially better. Bringing drinking chocolate into the fold of your go-to wintertime recipes will change the way you think about your favorite cozy, sippable treat.
The reason, very simply, is cocoa butter.
Cocoa beans are, roughly, made up of half solid (cocoa powder) and half fat (cocoa butter). They are present in all chocolate, but are also sold on their own after they’ve been separated by a hydraulic press. Most cocoa powder, because it is made from low quality or poorly fermented cocoa beans, is treated with alkali, or alkalized, which tones down any distinctive flavors that were present in the cocoa bean to deliver a dark, one note flavor (think Oreos). That means that you won’t have any musty or sour flavors from the low quality cocoa beans, but it also means that you won’t get to taste any of the delicious and specific flavors of fine flavor cocoa beans like the ones we use to make our single origin chocolate bars.
Alkalized cocoa powder certainly has its place in the kitchen, and there also exist excellent, non-alkalized cocoa powders out there, but we still recommend making hot chocolate with the real thing: chocolate. The cocoa butter in chocolate elevates hot cocoa from a pleasant childhood treat to an otherworldly, decadent dessert that will satisfy elementary school students and their parents both.
The main thing you’ll notice when you prepare a drinking chocolate instead of hot cocoa from a packet is that its texture will fill up your entire mouth and let the flavor of chocolate linger on your lips for much longer than a thinner cup of cocoa. The rich mouthfeel is part of why this recipe yields just two 8oz cups of drinking chocolate.
Ingredients
2 C Milk - Your favorite dairy substitute should work one to one, don’t think too hard! Use whatever you have on hand to put into your coffee or tea.
1 bar of Pure Dark Chocolate - Pick your favorite! 70% Pure Dark is going to be bright and fruity. 80% Pure Dark will be rich and more traditionally chocolatey. 92% Pure Dark packs a tangy punch.
A pinch of salt - I use the vanilla salt that I keep on my counter, but any sea salt will do. This helps the bright chocolate flavor pop against the milk or dairy substitute.
Optional flavors and garnishes - A dash of cinnamon or cayenne, a sprinkling of vanilla powder, microplane shavings from another, darker bar of chocolate? Your choice!
Process
Break or chop up your Pure Dark chocolate bar into smaller, meltable pieces.
Heat your milk or milk substitute in a saucepan until just before the boil, stirring every once in a while so that the bottom doesn’t burn and stick to your pan. You’ll be able to see tiny bubbles forming at the edge of the pot when it’s ready.
Add your broken up chocolate bar to the hot milk and whisk softly until it is completely melted.
Pour into two cups and add a garnish if you choose to.
Sip, don’t gulp, away.
It’s really, actually that easy to change the way you look at hot chocolate forever.