Review - La Soledad Canela Hot Chocolate

I had a tough time deciding which Mexican hot chocolate to review first. There are a ton of them! I wanted to review a very authentic one first, but I also wanted to introduce them the way I was introduced to them. It turns out, the first one I ever had was a pretty darn authentic one, La Soledad Canela flavored hot chocolate.

 

Unlike most American packaged hot chocolates, this isn't a powder mix, it's a solid chocolate tablet. That's how most traditional Mexican hot chocolates comes, as a tablet. Another staple of Mexican hot chocolates is cinnamon. They almost all seem to have it, which certainly isn't a bad thing. And a few of them often have nutty flavors, as well.



La Soledad makes quite a few other varieties of hot chocolate, but what I have here is the canela (Spanish for cinnamon).

They're a Mexican company, located in Oaxaca (wa-HOCK-a), Mexico. Oaxaca is known for cacao, used in mole sauces and as a beverage. So, yeah, this is good, authentic stuff. 

My girlfriend discovered this hot chocolate while doing a project with some Mexican and Aztec influences. She wanted to serve Mexican hot chocolate at the presentation, and found a place in Eagle Rock, CA, called Cacao Mexicatessan that sold this. Not only do they serve amazing food there, but they sell all kinds of imported products from Mexico, mostly cacao things.

The chocolate tablets are molded with La Soledad's logo and individually foil wrapped.

As usual, when I have a big chunk of chocolate to melt into some milk or water, I chop it up pretty thoroughly. Most Mexican chocolate tablets have a coarse, grainy texture. You may find that it doesn't melt completely, leaving grains at the bottom of the cup. That could be cinnamon, or perhaps it's the stone ground cacao. Whatever it is, it's fine to eat it if you want to. If it's the cacao, it's actually good for you!

Let's talk about another thing the Mexicans do with their hot chocolate - frothing!

Frothing is whipping the chocolate until a foam covers the surface. Before the Spanish reached Mexico in the 16th century, hot chocolate drinks were frothed by pouring them from one pitcher to another over and over. The Spaniards then invented the wooden tool pictured here, the molinillo. You hold the top of it between your palms and spin it back and forth, and it whips the liquid up into a perfect, yummy froth.

I have another frother, an electric one with its own pitcher, and I'll highlight that in a future blog post. For now, I wanted to keep it traditional and do it the old fashioned way.

La Soledad Canela hot chocolate is nice and light, a perfect breakfast or afternoon hot chocolate. In Mexico, hot chocolate is traditionally served with pan dulce, which are sweet breads that come in many varieties. I even found a great handmade and painted Mexican mug!
 
I couldn't find La Soledad on Amazon, so as far as I know, the only way to get it is to swing by Cacao Mexicatessan and pick some up, or to order it from their website, which requires that you email them about the products you want.

Do you know of any Mexican hot chocolates? Which is your favorite? I have an entire cupboard full, and I'll get to reviewing them all eventually, but please comment below and let me know your favorites. Or even better, a recipe!

La Soledad's website
http://www.chocolatedeoaxaca.com.mx

Recipe - Xocolatl, the Original Hot Chocolate

When chocolate was first created from cacao beans over two thousand years ago, it was in the form of a bitter beverage served hot or cold. The first form of solid chocolate wasn't created until the late 18th century. So for the majority of chocolate's existence in human culture, we've been drinking it.

The word "chocolate", according to Wikipedia, comes from Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. The word they used was "xocolatl", made up of the words "xococ" meaning bitter and "atl" meaning water or drink.

When I first began researching hot chocolate recipes, I came across some modern ones that attempted to recreate the flavor of those original hot chocolates created by the Aztecs and Mayans. As soon as I saw them, I knew I'd be making one! They sounded pretty bizarre for a hot chocolate.

Let's get started making a modern version of the original hot chocolate!

You're going to need:

2 3/4 cups water
1 green chile pepper, sliced
1/8 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp vanilla extract

Looking at that ingredient list, you can see we're working with the same basic stuff that would have been available two thousand years ago. Cocoa, vanilla, and pepper.

Put 3/4 cup of water and the sliced green chile (including the seeds) in a pot and bring it to boiling. Let it boil for 5-10 mins, so the water really takes on the chile flavor.

Strain it to remove the chile and the seeds, then put the water back in the pot. Add in the other 2 cups of water, put it on medium heat, and bring it to a boil again. As it's heating up, whisk in the vanilla extract. The vanilla mixed into the pepper water smells really good! I was surprised, I didn't think it would be very appetizing.

Finally, once it's boiling, add in the cocoa powder and keep whisking for another 5 minutes or so. You'll notice the mixture froths easily, but it's not a very thick froth.

This one is probably the healthiest hot chocolates you'll ever come across. No sugar at all, and the only thing even close to a sweetener is the vanilla. Unsweetened cocoa is actually very good for you. It has more antioxidants that green tea, blueberries, or wine, and can help lower cholesterol.

However, this hot chocolate isn't what us modern folk would consider delicious. It's not as bad as I thought it would be, but it wasn't great, either. The chile adds an interesting flavor that works well with the cocoa, but this drink reminded me more of thin, bitter coffee than it did a thick, yummy hot chocolate.

Hahahaha, in fact, after a few tastes, I didn't even want to drink all of it. I added in a few spoonfuls of sugar and it became much more enjoyable! If you want to sweeten it without ruining the healthier aspect of it, try blackstrap molasses or date sugar. Those are both amazingly healthy sweeteners!

If you like this hot chocolate a lot, try it with the actual versions of the ingredients the Aztecs and Mayans would have used. Get some cocoa nibs and grind them up into cocoa liquor, and use a vanilla bean or two instead of the liquid vanilla extract.

What a fun experiment! And now that we have an idea of where hot chocolate came from, we can really appreciate what the Europeans did for it by adding in sweeteners in the 17th century.

And don't worry, the next recipe I post will be a sweet, delicious cup of creamy awesomeness!