Review - Dagoba Drinking Chocolates

Dagoba chocolate is a product I've been seeing turn up more and more in my local grocery stores. I started seeing it first in the baking chocolates, and later saw their drinking chocolates pop up in the hot cocoa aisle. Being a "Star Wars" fan my entire life, how could I not be drawn to this chocolate!?

As always, we're going to enjoy a couple of their drinking chocolates for the review, but I did also grab their 100% unsweetened chocolate. It has a couple other ingredients in minuscule amounts (soy lecithin and milk), but it is still a very nice chocolate to work with.

I picked up both the Authentic and the Xocolatl drinking chocolates. The Authentic is simply their dark hot chocolate, while the Xocolatl is flavored to represent the ancient Mexican drinking chocolates with some added cinnamon and chili.

There's a small label on all their products showing a little frog. This is the Rainforest Alliance logo, and it's there because Dagoba is all about sustainability. Taking care of the environment, the cacao workers, and their cacao farms. I'm all for this! If cacao isn't sustained, that would mean no chocolate. That's not a world I want to live in!

The ingredients on both products are nice and simple. A great, straight forward mix. It just seems so unnecessary to add in all the extra preservatives and stuff that most store bought hot chocolates have in them, especially once you taste a chocolate like this. So much more real chocolate flavor! 

Their instructions actually made me laugh a little. What a pleasant way to describe the act of heating milk and scooping this chocolate into it! "When vapors rise, the milk will be at its most receptive to accept the chocolate into its embrace". Seriously, how awesome is that! 

The mix itself has nice chunks of real chocolate in it, which is great. Having the actual bits of whole chocolate in there is a definite improvement over mixes that only have cocoa powder. The fat (cocoa butter) from the chocolate really makes a difference in the smoothness.

By the way, did you know what Dagoba means? A dagoba is a shrine for sacred relics in the Far East, usually pertaining to Buddha. Kind of makes sense that George Lucas used it for the name of the planet where the wise Jedi Master Yoda was living in "The Empire Strikes Back".

The Authentic has a rich, almost smoky flavor. Nice dark notes, but not bitter - it still manages to be sweet. And as I always recommend, you can use just a little of the mix for a nice lighter breakfast hot chocolate, and then in the evening, use a lot for a rich after-dinner dessert drink.

The Xocolatl is spicy, but not uncomfortably so. It's a very nice heat. The cinnamon is not as forward in this mix as in some other Mexican chocolates, but it's there, and it's a great addition. It'd be great to see Dagoba add a little more cinnamon to this mix and really make it pop!

Both of these chocolates are wonderful and worth picking up. Dagoba drinking chocolates are a perfect replacement for those packets of powdered milk disguised as hot cocoa you're keeping in your cupboard or office. Hopefully there's a gourmet grocery store near you that carries them, but if not, you can always grab them at Dagoba's website. They have a couple other flavors there, as well, like Chai, which sounds great!

Review - Ticket Kitchen Hot Chocolate on a Stick

If you can eat it, someone has put it on stick. I suppose that goes for things you can drink, too. Which brings us to this - hot chocolate on a stick!

Hot chocolate on a stick has been turning up all over the place lately, especially on Etsy. It's a great, creative way to give something different and delicious as a gift. Of course, commercial chocolatiers have gotten in on the fun, and this is the first one I tried. It's a five pack from the Ticket Kitchen in San Francisco.

They're doing some very interesting things with their hot chocolates there at Ticket! Check out some of their flavors. If you don't see one you like, go ahead and suggest one! They also sell all their hot chocolates in whatever serving sizes you may need, whether you're just hanging out by yourself or hosting a party.

The pack I bought has two flavors, French Truffle and Three Chili. I tried the French Truffle for this review. As is becoming standard with gourmet hot chocolates, they give you two different sets of instructions for making it, American style and European style. I tend to like the European. It's thick, using half the liquid that American style uses, and it uses water instead of milk, which really lets the flavor of the chocolate come through undiluted.

I used my melting mug for this one, since it is perfectly sized for smaller European style portions. Quickly boiled some water and set this little square of perfection right down into the mug.

The melting was interesting. It took a little longer than it would have taken on the stove, which of course was to be expected since I removed the water from the heat and put it in the mug.

I waited patiently until it was completely smooth to taste even the tiniest bit. Wow, what a great hot chocolate! The French Truffle flavor is great, it tastes like a rich, vanilla bon bon melted into a liquid. Absolutely delicious and worth ordering!

If you do go and order some, and they happen to have one of those "how did you hear of us" sections on their order form, be sure to tell them the Melting Mug sent you! And if you try a different flavor than I did, please let me know what you thought of it. I'm very curious about their other amazing selections.

Recipe - Coconut Cinnamon Frozen Hot Chocolate Pops

It's mid-June now, and that means summer is here. It's hot out there, especially here in Los Angeles. Most people, when I mention having a hot chocolate in the summer, look at me oddly and say something like "But it's so hot in summer, I like hot chocolate in the winter". It makes no difference that while they're saying this, they may be holding some scalding hot coffee or tea, probably their third or fourth of the day. People just associate hot chocolate with winter and Christmas. Let's try and change that, ok?

But not today! Today we're going to ask the hot chocolate to cool down a bit for us. Of course, lots of folks love iced coffees and frappuccinos. And yep, there are iced hot chocolates out there, too! I'm going to explore a bunch of them all summer long, starting with some good old fashioned frozen chocolate pops. Taza Chocolate came up with this recipe, using the coconut milk as the base. I switched it around a bit because I didn't have any of their Oaxacan discs handy.

Ingredients are as follows:

1 13.5 oz can of coconut milk
3 oz semi-sweet chocolate (try for 50-70% cacao)
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon

Baker's, you've seen that stuff, right? It's in the baking section of the grocery store. Did you know Baker's was the first producer of chocolate in America? I'll bet you thought it was Hershey's. Nope, Baker's was here before them - over 100 years before them! The Baker's box says 1780, but Dr. James Baker and John Hannon were importing beans and making chocolate in Massachusetts as early as 1764. So don't walk by Baker's thinking it's some off-brand you're afraid to try. It's 12 years older than our country is!

These are the popsicle molds I have. They are great! We usually fill them with lemonade, but today, they will experience the majesty of chocolate.

Turn on your stovetop and get the coconut milk into a pan.

While that's warming up, chop up the chocolate. If you've been following this blog, you know this helps it melt much faster. Always chop the chocolate.

Once the coconut milk is nice and hot, add in the chocolate, the sugar, and the cinnamon. Whisk it around, make sure everything is incorporated nicely and the chocolate melts smoothly.

And taste it! It's really good. Really, really strong, but definitely delicious. If we were going to serve this as a hot drink, maybe we'd tame it down a bit with a cup of milk or something. But we're not, so just let it be its thick, strong, tasty self.

We now have an almost-boiling pot of coconut chocolate drink that we need to put into the freezer. Let's help it cool down first, though. We don't want to melt our popsicle molds.

I set up a little ice bath for it. I filled a large bowl with ice cubes, then put a smaller metal bowl on top and made sure it was sitting level. Then I poured in the warm chocolate and stirred it for maybe 5 or 10 minutes.

Once it was at about room temperature, I filled the popsicle molds.

They have a little fill line marked on the inside. Stick to that! If you're freezing something with water in it, the water expands a little bit. With these chocolate pops, it leaves a little space underneath for dripping.

Throw them in the freezer, and in 8 hours, bust them out and enjoy!

They are so good! Addicting, even! They are still pretty strong, but if you liked fudgsicles growing up, then you will love these! And of course, you can change up the recipe to create any flavor combination you want. Maybe some chili powder mixed in there? I know, I know, "It's summer, it's hot, who would want to add chili into a popsicle..."

Recipe - "White Hot" Hot Chocolate

When it comes to eating chocolate, I'm not a huge fan of white chocolate. It's ok when there are other ingredients mixed in, but by itself, I don't know, it's just too sweet or something. But this recipe is really great! It's light and spicy and creamy, everything you'd want from a great hot chocolate.

Is white chocolate even real chocolate? Technically, no, I don't think it is. Ok, what is it, then? Good quality white chocolate is mainly cocoa butter, sugar, and milk. Cocoa butter is the fat content of a cacao bean. When cacao liquor is pressed with tremendous pressure, the cocoa butter is separated out, leaving the solids behind. Those solids are ground further to become cocoa powder. The cocoa butter is often added to processed chocolate to increase its smoothness and creaminess. Cheap white chocolate sometimes has no cocoa butter at all, and can be mostly vegetable fats and sugar.

I'm using Godiva White Chocolate with Vanilla Bean. It's a great, high quality white chocolate, and the vanilla bean right in the bar adds a little extra flavor. 

You can see in the picture above where the heat in the "white hot" name comes from - chili powder! There's also a bit of cinnamon to balance it out a bit. It takes a bit of heat off the chili and a bit of sweetness away from the chocolate, so everything plays nice together.

The ingredient list:

1 3/4 cup milk (2% or whole)

5 tbsp chopped white chocolate

1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp chili powder

Put the milk on medium heat on the stove. Once it's just about to boil, add in the white chocolate and spices and whisk until fully melted. Turn the heat down a little and let it steep for a few minutes. Even though we added in what seems to be a lot of white chocolate, you'll find the hot chocolate still has milk flavor, the white chocolate not being overpowering at all.

This drink has some bite to it, too! It's not too bad, just enough to be pleasant. When I first made this and added in that much chili powder, I really thought it would be hotter than it is. I really like this one, much more than I thought I would, considering that I don't really enjoy white chocolate. And it's a nice break from regular hot chocolates.

This is a good one to experiment with on your own, as well. Add less or more chili powder, or try cayenne pepper powder or some other kind of ground pepper. Maybe try adding some vanilla extract to really bring out those flavors in the white chocolate. Garnish it with sprinkles of chili powder or cinnamon, or even cocoa powder. Now that I think about it, maybe this drink would be perfect with some chocolate marshmallows!