Sun twinkling on the river this evening

[venta]

I've ranted here before about how there is good hot chocolate, and there is mediocre hot chocolate, and you can never be sure which one you're going to get. Hot chocolate advertised with words like "luxury" or "indulgent" often lures me in and then turns out to be insipid, beige-ish, mediocre hot chocolate.

These days, I know what I consider good: I want my hot chocolate to be thick, and dark, and possibly slightly bitter. I want what is described as Italian hot chocolate.

There is a cafe a short walk from my office that sells Italian hot chocolate. Fortunately it is not a great example of the species, or I would be over there far too often for my own good.

Anyway. I suddenly realised that once you know the name of something, you can Google for it. Names are power, kids.

So I did. And lo, lots of recipes. Most of which seemed to involve potato starch, or at the very least corn starch. Um, isn't that just chocolate sauce? Doesn't sound like an authentic recipe to me.

Then I found a more appealing recipe. Just three ingredients: chocolate, full-fat milk, and icing sugar plus some faffing about with a bain-marie.

So - aided and abetted by Alexandra Palace farmers' market, which furnished me with unpasteurized milk (!) - I set to.

Now, I have also mentioned here before that I don't cook well in metric. So I thought ok, let's get 100ml of milk and 120g of dark, high cocoa-solid chocolate.

What I should have been thinking was holy crap, that is more than a quarter of a pound of dark chocolate for one small drink. This is not a good idea.

It became rapidly apparent once I weighed or the chocolate. But hey, I've started so I'll finish.

Also, if you are ever going to do this, buy grated chocolate. Grating over 1/4lb chocolate is really bloody hard work.

Shorn of verbosity, the recipe is: melt chocolate and icing sugar together, stir in milk gradually. It is a tiny quantity of milk, so the result basically looked like melted chocolate. To be honest, it would also have looked like that if I hadn't bothered with the grating, I reckon.

I put some more milk in. Then some more. Then figured I was supposed to be following a recipe, and poured the result into two cups. Yes, I know it was supposed to be a one-person drink, but it clearly wasn't.

In the end, ChrisC drank around a third of it. Although "drank" is a strong word, it really required a spoon. I managed a third, and the rest went into the fridge until we felt strong enough to face it. It was basically still like drinking straight melted chocolate, and was far too rich.

So, overall, not a success.

And now, while looking for the link to when I last complained about hot chocolate, I realise Nalsa suggested one whole big bar of chocolate to a pint of milk. I still don't think it's going to come out the way I want, though :(

Comments

[motodraconis]

Actually, that sounds pretty revolting. But then I'm pretty take it or leave it about chocolate in general.

[ladythmpr]

I make my own hot chocolate at home (because most shops use a mix that often has gluten in it). My basic recipe is 1 teaspoon of sugar, 3 teaspoons of good cocoa (my favorite is Penzey's and I pay more per pound for it than I will pay for meat), and 1 1/2 cups milk. This make a fairly rich, very slightly bitter-bitey cup of hot chocolate. I mostly make it with rice milk, because my kids can't have fluid milk, and I'm lactose intolerant, and it still turns out good. (I will very occasionally buy some lactose-free milk for me, and oh, it makes the hot chocolate OH SO good!)