Recipe - Honey Lavender Hot Chocolate

Check out this picture:

Those are lavender buds in milk. That's crazy! Flowers in milk! When I first came across some recipes with lavender buds, I thought it sounded weird. I'd never had lavender buds in anything. Would the hot chocolate taste like soap? Only one way to find out - make it! So I did just that, and it's awesome. I made it a bit more awesome by throwing some honey into the mix (you can't have too much awesome!). It's like a clear summer day filtered down into a delicious hot chocolate, and you're going to love it.

It's not completely unheard of to have lavender in chocolate. Dagoba makes a bar, and a quick google search of "lavender chocolate" brings up a bunch more.

Let's take a look at what we need.

1 1/2 cups milk (2% or whole)

1 heaping tbsp dark chocolate

1 heaping tbsp milk chocolate

1 tbsp honey

1/4 tsp lavender

The two different types of chocolate are going to bring different flavors to the drink. For the dark, I'm using 70% Scharffen Berger, and for the milk, some regular Hershey's. The dark brings the strong chocolate flavor, and the milk chocolate adds in a little creaminess and sweetness to it.

The lavender buds are just little closed-up dried flower buds. As soon as you open the package, you'll smell them. Strong stuff! I'm using a brand I found at a local Whole Foods market.

The honey I'm using is all natural and from a local farmer's market. It's made by Harry's Honey, and you can learn about Harry here.

Put the milk on the stove, medium heat, and throw in the lavender. Whisk it around, so the lavender really gets mixed in there. Bring the milk to a simmer, stirring constantly so it doesn't scald.

Once it's simmering and steaming, move it off the heat and let it sit for five minutes. This is called steeping, and it lets the warm milk become even more infused with the flavor of the lavender. Five full minutes, no cheating! Maybe even a little more if you want.

While it's steeping, let's make some garnish, shall we? How about some strong vanilla whipped cream? It's quick, easy, and compliments this hot chocolate perfectly. I covered how to make homemade whipped cream back in my posting about peanut butter cup hot chocolate, and it's basically the same process here. Except, obviously, don't use peanut butter in this one. I added 1/2 tsp of Ojio ground vanilla bean and a 1/4 tsp of vanilla extract. And sugar, of course.

You can see the vanilla bean in it! So much vanilla flavor! It's delicious!

Ok, so the milk has steeped with the lavender, let's get back to it. We have to strain out the lavender buds now that we've infused the milk with their flavor. I set up a strainer over a bowl, like this:

Just pour the milk through it, make sure there's no stray lavender in the pot, and then pour the strained milk back into the pot.

It probably cooled a bit while it steeped, so go ahead and turn the heat back on. Once it's just about simmering again, add in the chocolates and whisk until melted completely. Turn off the heat and finally, add in the honey. Once that's incorporated fully, you are good to go. Fill up a mug, top with our vanilla whipped cream, and enjoy!

Even if you don't think you're a big fan of flowers or flowery scents, give this one a try. When you're drinking it, it doesn't come across as flowery or soapy in any way, just relaxing. I guess that's why they use lavender in soaps to begin with, right, because it's so soothing and relaxing? Well, that same concept carries over to hot chocolate, too.

Next post, I'll contrast the relaxing lavender by doing a garlic hot chocolate!

(Just kidding, that's probably disgusting.)