Hot Chocolate Resources:

Hot Chocolate, by Michael Turback: A compendium of recipes, compiled by the author and chocolate industry heavyweights

Hot Chocolate, by Fred Thompson: Same title, different recipes

Chocolate Obsession’s Hot Chocolate Week: A blogger plunges into the depths

Chow’s Hot Cocoa Hotties: hot chocolate and cocoa mixes rated

Cacao-Spiked Hot Chocolate

Heat one cup of milk in a small pan over medium-low heat until simmering. Turn off heat. Add two ounces of chocolate, chopped, and whisk until encorporated. Add a tablespoon of cream and a full shot of creme de cacao. Pour into a mug and serve, in the spirit of complete relaxation.
Serves one.

Quick Nutella Hot Chocolate:

Heat one cup of milk in a small pot over medium-low heat until simmering. Remove from heat and stir in three tablespoons of Nutella. Pour into a mug, dust with cocoa powder, and drink. Serves one.

This column appears on Sugar Savvy on the second and fourth week of each month. Each installment will feature a recipe, and may include tips from famous chocolatiers, ancient techniques, or contemporary innovations. Please send in your questions about hot chocolate by Email.

Chuck’s Hot Chocolate with Caramel and Cinnamon

Ingredients:
8 cups whole milk
1 cup water
1 1/3 cup sugar
1 cinnamon stick
16 ounces bittersweet chocolate (70%), chopped

Directions:
1. Bring the milk and water to a boil in a medium saucepan, then remove from heat.

2. Caramelize the sugar with the cinnamon stick until it is dark amber.

3. Add the milk and water mixture to the caramel to stop the cooking, and stir over heat until smooth.

4. Add the chocolate and whisk until just at a boil.

5. Use an immersion blender to froth for one minute.

Serves a crowd.

This column appears on Sugar Savvy on the second and fourth week of each month. Each installment will feature a recipe, and may include tips from famous chocolatiers, ancient techniques, or contemporary innovations. Please send in your questions about hot chocolate by Email.

At midnight last night, in Kiwi wine country, I knew it was time for a hot chocolate. And while I had left my 400-gram block of Tava chocolate behind in Auckland (about seven hours away by bus), I did have a cardamom-infused bar made by the chocolatiers at Melbourne’s Cacao, intriguingly marked “Claypots Blend.” Claypots is a sublime Melbourne fish restaurant, with a new next-door bar that stocks (among other things) its own blend of chocolate. I also had a container of whole milk, a bottle containing a few tablespoons of fresh cream, and some resolve-weakening cinnamon bark imported from India and sold by the pioneering small business Coffee and Spice Central here in New Zealand’s Hawke’s Bay. In other wine regions, in other countries, in other hemisphere’s, I’ll remember that midnight hot chocolate.

Herein is a recipe for other travelers who find themselves in the same predicament:

Midnight Hot Chocolate

1 2-3 ounce flavored chocolate bar (almost anything produced by Dagoba or Green & Black’s will do, but avoid bars with nuts or other solid pieces)
1 cup milk
1 very fresh and fragrant cinnamon stick or piece of cinnamon bark
1 tablespoon cream

Break up the chocolate bar into small pieces. Place the milk with the cinnamon in a small pot and bring the milk to a simmer. Remove from heat. Remove the cinnamon, add the chocolate, and whisk until blended. Cover and allow to steep for ten minutes. Return to heat and whisk constantly until just simmering. Remove from heat again and serve immediately.

Serves one.

This column appears on Sugar Savvy during the second and fourth week of each month. Each installment will feature a recipe, and may include tips from famous chocolatiers, ancient techniques, or contemporary innovations. Please send in your questions about hot chocolate by Email.

Inventive Hot Chocolate

3 cardamom pods
1 teaspoon Earl Grey tea leaves
2 cups milk
3 ounces dark chocolate
1 ounce milk chocolate
Special equipment: tea infuser

Place the blade of a chef’s knife on top of the cardamom pods and press down to crush them, as you would a clove of garlic. Place the crushed pods and the tea leaves in the infuser. In a small pot, bring the milk to a simmer over medium-low heat, and then remove from the heat. Place the filled infuser into the pot with the hot milk, cover, and allow to steep for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, chop or grate all of the chocolate into small pieces.

Remove the infuser from the pot, add the chocolate, and whisk to combine. (If the chocolate pieces are small enough, the temperature of the milk will be enough to melt them; but if the chocolate does not melt completely, place the pot over low heat and continue whisking until the chocolate is melted evenly.) Cover again, and allow the mixture to sit (off the heat) for another 20 minutes.

The mixture should now be thick and flavorful. Whisk the hot chocolate over low heat until simmering. Remove from heat and serve immediately.

Serves two–go ahead, share it with somebody.

This column appears on Sugar Savvy during the second and fourth week of each month. Each installment will feature a recipe, and may include tips from famous chocolatiers, ancient techniques, or contemporary innovations. Please send in your questions about hot chocolate by Email.

John’s Classic Drinking Chocolate

2-1/2 cups whole milk
4 ounces 99% unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1-1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon (optional)
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional)

Heat the milk in a medium saucepan over medium heat until it is hot to the touch. Whisk in the chocolate and sugar and continue whisking for 1 to 2 minutes until the sugar has dissolved. Whisk in the vanilla and the cinnamon and cayenne, if using. Reduce the heat to low. The chocolate may be made ahead; it will thicken as it sits.

Serve in demitasse cups or mugs depending on desired portion.

This column appears on Sugar Savvy during the second and fourth week of each month. Each installment will feature a recipe, and may include tips from famous chocolatiers, ancient techniques, or contemporary innovations. Please send in your questions about hot chocolate by Email.

Authentic Rich and Thick Hot Chocolate

This recipe works beautifully using water instead of milk, which is perfect for people who want to consume chocolate for its beneficial antioxidants. (When cocoa is combined with milk, the antioxidants in the cocoa bind to the proteins in the milk, making the antioxidants bio-unavailable, and therefore essentially useless.) The cornflour in this recipe takes away the austere edge that most water-based chocolate drinks have. It’s also easy to modify: if it’s too strong, add some extra sugar to taste; if it’s too rich, add some extra water.

The drink is best served with something to dip into it—ideally churros (Spanish donuts), but croissants work well too!

Ingredients:
40g unsweetened chocolate
2 cups water
2 Tbsp sugar (or more, to taste)
2 Tbsp cornflour

Serves 2

1. Pour the water into a saucepan, and place over medium heat until it’s nearly simmering.
2. Meanwhile, combine the sugar and cornflour in a cup.
3. Pour a small amount of the hot water into the sugar/cornflour mixture, and stir until you have a runny, lump-free paste.
4. Pour this paste back into the saucepan with the rest of the water, over medium heat.
5. Break the chocolate into pieces, then add the pieces to the hot water mixture.
6. Whisk the mixture over heat until it starts to thicken. This will take a few minutes. (The longer you cook it, the thicker it will become.)
7. Pour into mugs, and serve immediately. (It’s normal for this hot chocolate to form a skin, like custard.)

This column appears on Sugar Savvy during the second and fourth week of each month. Each installment will feature a recipe, and may include tips from famous chocolatiers, ancient techniques, or contemporary innovations. Please send in your questions about hot chocolate by Email.

A bit of explanation is necessary here.  “Max” Brenner (real name: Oded) is an Israeli pastry chef who founded his own chocolate shop in Tel Aviv in the 1990’s.  In 2000, an Australian husband and wife were so taken by Brenner’s uber-contemporary chocolate creations (not to mention his uber-hip marketing campaign) that they struck a deal with the by-then-master chocolatier to run several Max Brenner shops in Sydney and Melbourne, effectively as a franchise.  However, this year Brenner himself became a player in the global chocolate game with the much-publicized opening of two shops in New York.  Brenner’s parent company (Israeli food conglomerate Strauss-Elite) has made several recent changes to the Max Brenner product line in order to operate more effectively in a much bigger market.  For the step-siblings of the Max Brenner family in Australia, these changes boil down to an organizational nuisance at best and a logistical nightmare at worst.  A rumor is circulating among the staff at the Australian shops that the orchid products are too hard to produce on the large scale and have been removed from the line-up for good.  That orchid factoid is unconfirmed, but certainly a reasonable assertion.

I left the downtown Melbourne Max Brenner café knowing that if I wanted to taste the elusive chocolate and orchid elixir any time soon, I would have to make it myself.  Then the real mystery began.  What, exactly, is the active ingredient in orchid hot chocolate? I wondered.  The ingredients list printed on one of the Max Brenner do-it-yourself boxes of hot chocolate powder would have been very telling, if I could have found one.  Not only are the Max Brenner stores out of stock but when I asked about the Brenner hot chocolate mixes at David Jones, an epicenter of gourmet food in Australia, the lady behind the counter told me that “it’s lovely stuff, but we don’t carry it anymore.”  (Interestingly, they’ve since restocked.)

I started to think that I might have better luck finding the secret orchid recipe through unofficial channels, so I did a search for relevant articles on food blogs.  Several bloggers (including those from The Food Nerds and Tangent) have tried Max Brenner’s orchid-flavored drink, and the consensus is that “orchid oil” is what gives the sultry libation its life blood.  I did another search.  Other than suspicious-looking soap and massage cream, the only thing a Google search for “orchid oil” turned up was an oil lamp with an orchid flower suspended in it.  Google is not an oracle—it’s simply a computer algorithm.  But it’s also a remarkably accurate record of what’s being discussed, purchased, and consumed in the modern world.  If something’s not on Google, it’s probably not in very many other places either.  I started to wonder whether orchid oil even existed.

I needed to know, What is orchid oil, and by what other name are people smelling it?  I consulted the web pages of the American and Australian orchid societies, practicing my amateur Susan Orlean act.  But my examination of horticultural sources turned up nothing.  Perhaps, I thought, orchid oil is one of those so-called “essential oils.”  I confess to a less-than-solid understanding of the characteristics and uses of essential oil.  All I know is that after insisting on traveling home from India with four bottles of the stuff, my luggage smelled like a diaper bag that had been left in a French whore’s boudoir.  I can’t imagine that any kind of essential oil (even one made with orchids) is intended to be used in food preparation.

It was time to forget about the oil.  I decided to look for something that was simply “essential” orchid, i.e. “orchid essence.”  That led me to the not-particularly-glamorous-but-very-helpful website Baking 911.  A page on food flavorings explained that “essences are distilled with steam from fruits, spices and other plants, and used to enhance or intensify flavor,” and went on to mention that “there are thousands of essences from almond to cinnamon to coconut.”  A thorough search of essences produced by big-name companies like McCormick as well as specialty producers like King Arthur Flour turned up flavors derived from lemons, hazelnuts, and roses—but no orchids.  Of course, every flavoring manufacturer makes a vanilla extract.  Now is probably the time to address a not-immediately-obvious-but-very-relevant kink in the whole orchid-as-exotic-flavor set-up:  the vanilla plant is an orchid, therefore any food or drink prepared with vanilla is inherently “orchid flavored.”

Holding to the belief that there could be a legitimate, distinct (non-vanilla) orchid flavor, I continued on my quest.  But to obtain the floral flavoring I was after, I had to take one more detour from my culinary path.  I remembered that a former neighbor of mine who is a homeopathic healer used to work with something called Bach Flower Essences.  I went back to Google and then to another website that explained, “Dr. Edward Bach was a British physician, who began to see disease as … a physical manifestation of unhappiness, fear and worry….  Over a period of years Dr. Bach found 38 healing flowers that with the right preparation became the 38 Bach Flower Essences.  These Essences are enough to remove all negative emotional problems.”

At the risk of embarking on a botanical experiment that would deliver me to the ass-headed fate intended for a character in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I cross-referenced each of the 38 Essences with an encyclopedia of flowers, hoping to find one whose base ingredient belonged to the orchid family.  I was dismayed to learn that the Bach flowers are almost all blossoms found on evergreen trees, without a single orchid among them.  After several calls to local health food stores, I found out that there is an updated set of floral remedies made exclusively from flowers that are native to the Australian continent, called Bush Flower Essences.  Among them are Green Spider Orchid Essence, Red Helmet Orchid Essence, and several Combination Essences that incorporate orchid ingredients.  (The aphrodisiac-seeking set will surely be disappointed to learn that the Sexuality combination contains no orchid at all.)

By the time I actually made it to a health food store, it was Saturday afternoon.  This column was supposed to run on Thursday.  I was already two days behind schedule with my orchid and chocolate concoction.  A friendly shopkeeper explained that he doesn’t regularly stock the pure orchid essences but he could place a special order for one on Monday.  Not wanting to wait any longer, I settled on the Mediation Essence, a premixed combination whose ingredient list includes anglesword, boronia, bush fuchsia, bush iris, fringed violet, red lily—and green spider orchid.  The bottle explains that this tincture “assists in deepening one’s spirituality.”  When I got home, I decided to put myself through a trial of the product (which also served as a taste test).  I followed the instructions, placing seven drops of Meditation Essence under my tongue.  The stuff tasted predominantly of the alcohol used as its preservative—but with an open mind (and a brief suspension of disbelief) I picked up just a hint of an exotic, floral perfume.

Before writing this, I slowly heated a small pot of milk, whisked in a block of Scharffen Berger chocolate that I’d been saving for just the right moment, and then (with the focus of someone auditioning for the lead goofy alchemist role in a stage version of Tom Robbins’ Jitterbug Perfume) carefully added exactly one dose of the orchid-laced Meditation Essence.

Orchid Hot Chocolate
Chop or grate two ounces of couverture chocolate into small pieces.  Heat one cup of milk on low until just below the boiling point.  Remove from the heat.  Whisk in the chocolate until melted and incorporated.  Add seven drops of Green Spider Orchid Essence, Red Helmet Orchid Essence, or Mediation Essence.  Carefully whisk to combine.

This column appears on Sugar Savvy during the second and fourth Thursday of each month. Each installment will feature a recipe, and may include tips from famous chocolatiers, ancient techniques, or contemporary innovations. Please send in your questions about hot chocolate by Email.

Valrhona Hot Chocolate
Chop or grate three ounces of Valrhona chocolate into small pieces. Heat one cup of milk on low until just below the boiling point. Whisk in the chocolate until melted and incorporated. Remove the pot from the heat, cover it, and let the mixture sit for twenty minutes. Allowing the hot chocolate to steep in this way will enhance the flavors. Before serving, heat the mixture to just below boiling point again.
Serves one.

Chocolate-loving chef, cookbook author, and blogger David Lebovitz also has a terrific article on Parisian hot chocolate, including a pair of do-it-yourself recipes.

This column appears on Sugar Savvy during the second and fourth week of each month. Each installment will feature a recipe, and may include tips from famous chocolatiers, ancient techniques, or contemporary innovations. Please send in your questions about hot chocolate by Email.