Review - Tea Room Holiday Chai Nog

The holiday season is here again. It seems to arrive faster every year! And thankfully, the holiday season always brings out the best in hot chocolates from chocolate makers all over the world.

I've know about The Tea Room chocolates for a while now. They make an amazing variety of high quality bars, most of which are infused with tea flavors. Things like milk chocolate with honeybush caramel tea and dark chocolate with raspberry rooibos tea.

A couple months ago I learned they made some drinking chocolates. And not only do they offer 13 great flavor combinations, but they also offer 3 additional holiday flavors.

I picked up a canister of their Holiday Chai Nog. It's a white hot chocolate infused with the flavors of black tea, cardamom, cinnamon, pepper, and clove.

Great packaging! Colorful and intricate, very fancy looking.


I love how, right there on the main description page for their drinking chocolate selection, they tell you straight up - "This is not cocoa, it's PREMIUM ORGANIC CHOCOLATE". That's become my mantra since starting this blog. There's a huge difference between hot cocoa and hot chocolate. If you're still drinking cocoa from a packet, please proceed directly to my first posted recipe and have your life changed.

The shaved chocolate looks great, and the smell is just unbelievably comforting! It's the aromatic equivalent of being wrapped in a blanket in front of a fireplace on Christmas Eve! They use all organic ingredients, and I don't mean just the chocolate and tea. Even the spices are organic. And bonus - everything they do is non-GMO and gluten-free.

Included in the tin are instructions for a couple different ways to make the drink. Curiously, they lump both water and milk based recipes together as "European Style". Then they seem to correct themselves and follow up with "Water is classic European". I've been in the mood for creamier hot chocolates lately, so I chose to use half and half, as directed in their "Rich Hot Chocolate" instructions.

The amount of chocolate mix to add is also open to your personal taste, as they recommend 1-3 tablespoons. I like mine as flavorful as I can get it, but I also wanted to review it fairly using their provided instructions. I went ahead and used 3 tablespoons.

Definitely a top notch white hot chocolate, and very much in the spirit of the holidays. I found it to taste like a very light pumpkin spice white hot chocolate, with hints of cinnamon and nutmeg. Very delicious and very much recommended!

Although it says "nog" in the name of the hot chocolate, I didn't get much of an eggnog flavor. (This led me to research what exactly "nog" means, and apparently it's not well defined.)

I've not seen The Tea Room hot chocolates in any stores, but ordering from their site was extremely easy and fast. I will also definitely be checking out more of their flavors, and I'll report back here when I do.

Have a great holiday season!

Recipe - Eggnog Hot Chocolate

Eggnog, another classic Christmas flavor! Do you like eggnog? I didn't when I was a kid, but that's probably because I was afraid to try it. I assumed with a name like eggnog, it was probably nothing but raw eggs and a little milk. Man, did I miss out! Ever since I tried it, I've pretty much become an eggnog addict.

I first tried a chocolate eggnog by simply adding chocolate syrup to a full glass. It's great like that! Naturally, at Christmas, I had to come up with a simple, delicious hot chocolate that lets the flavor of the eggnog really come through. I think I did pretty good, but you'll have to try it for yourself and let me know!

If you've never dared to try it, eggnog is really thick, incredibly creamy, and very sweet. It tastes of vanilla and spices, mainly nutmeg. Every glass is like its own little serving of dessert.

We only need a few things for our eggnog hot chocolate.

Ingredients:

¾ cup eggnog, your favorite brand
½ cup milk (1% or 2%)
1 tbsp 99% (or 100%) chocolate, chopped
1 tsp vanilla extract













99% chocolate (or 100%, also known as baking chocolate) is another thing that fooled me when I was a kid. The package says chocolate, and it sure looks like chocolate. But taste it. It's bitter and strong, very much like cocoa powder. It has no sugar or sweetener of any kind, so it's very unpleasant. In fact, it's pretty much cocoa mass, or cocoa liquor, which is simply the ground cacao beans. In this case, it's ground and refined just like regular eating chocolate, but no sweetener is ever added. It's different from cocoa powder in that the cocoa butter from the bean has been completely retained. In cocoa powder, the butter is pressed out.

The Scharffen Berger chocolate I'm using is 99% because they added a tiny bit of vanilla when they made it. Chop that chocolate up small, like we always do on this blog.

I'm using eggnog from Broguiere's Farm Fresh Dairy, which is a great local Southern California dairy. Their eggnog is thick, creamy, and amazing! So rich! And they still use glass bottles, which is great.

Ok, let's get busy! We're going to thin out the eggnog a tiny bit by adding milk to it. Grab a measuring cup that holds at least 2 cups and fill it up to ¾ with eggnog.

Then add milk until the level reaches 1¼.

Of course, you can adjust this ratio to your liking, but this is a good starting point.

Put into a saucepan on the stove top, set the heat to medium. Don't let it boil, but get it as close as you can. Once it's nice and hot, add in the chocolate and whisk until it's completely melted. Then turn off the heat and add the vanilla.

Traditionally, eggnog is served with grated nutmeg on top. Once our hot chocolate is in the mug, top it with whipped cream, then sprinkle nutmeg on top! Perfect! Or, even better, if you happen to be making your own fresh whipped cream, add nutmeg into the cream before you beat it.

If this isn't the perfect Christmas comforting drink, I don't know what is!