Recipe - Malted Hot Chocolate

It's pretty obvious what we're going to make this time. That iconic package says it all - Whoppers hot chocolate! This is pretty much the drinkable equivalent of that classic candy.

I've loved Whoppers since I was a kid. Well, I love almost all candy, so singling out Whoppers isn't anything special. I've also always loved malted milk shakes, although honestly, I never really noticed the "malted" part until I was much older.




Lets take a look a the ingredients and go through them.

1 1/4 cup 2% milk
2 1/2 tbsp malt powder
1 oz Villar's 63% chocolate
1 tbsp powdered sugar
1 tsp cocoa powder
1/2 tsp vanilla

The Whoppers are optional, they are not a necessary ingredient. We're only going to use them for a topping. The magic is capturing that flavor without using them!








The real secret to this hot chocolate is the malted milk powder. Malted milk powder is a mix of barley, wheat flour, and powdered milk. If you taste it by itself, it kind of tastes like a crushed shortbread cookie. It definitely adds a very distinct flavor to things. It's exactly what they add into milkshakes to make malts. It also turns up in Whoppers in a very small amount.

When I first started experimenting with this one, I was adding only a little bit of the malted milk powder. I could not notice a huge influence from it, and eventually found that I'd have to add quite a lot to really get that malt flavor. To match the flavor of Whoppers, some sugar had to be added, as well. If you prefer the flavor of a malted milkshake over the flavor of Whoppers, you could just leave the sugar out of this recipe.

The chocolate I'm using in this one is 63% Villar's dark chocolate. Lately I've been favoring chocolates that are 70% or higher, but for this one, to match the sugary flavor of the chocolate in Whoppers, we're going lower cocoa content, higher sugar content. Villar's also has a bit more of a candy flavor than some of the more artisanal chocolates like Valrhona or Sharffenberger.

The vanilla extract I'm using I purchased in Mexico. I was there in November 2014 for my wedding and found this in the gift shop at the resort we were staying at. This stuff is wonderful! Extremely flavorful, and seems to be a little stronger than our typical vanilla here in the US.

While researching it online, I learned a little something. On the back of the label of this vanilla, it says "This product does not contain coumarin". I did not know what that was, but I was curious. It turns out that coumarin is mildly toxic and affects the liver and kidneys. It's banned in the US, but some cheaper Mexican vanilla uses it as a substitute for real vanilla. There's a great little write up about it on Snopes. So while I don't have to worry about it in the vanilla I picked up, it's something to keep an eye out for if you are purchasing vanilla overseas.

Get your milk warming up over medium heat and put the malt powder in right away. I feel like this gives it the most opportunity to dissolve, absorb in, or whatever it is it does when added to a liquid.

Once everything starts to heat up, go ahead and add in the chocolate, sugar, and cocoa powder. Once it's just about boiling, add in that delicious vanilla and take it off the heat.

I made some strong vanilla whipped cream, and then sprinkled the crushed Whoppers candy on top of that. Mmmmm, delicious! The Whoppers bits drop down into the hot chocolate, warm up and start melting, and make these perfect little morsels to search around for with your spoon. It's a perfect dessert hot chocolate.

Recipe - Homemade Chocolate Syrup

That picture is not hot chocolate. It could easily become hot chocolate, though!

Today's post is about making your own chocolate syrup, which can be used for making both hot chocolate and cold chocolate milk. It's good for tons of things, as I'm sure you know. On top of ice cream, pies, in milkshakes, etc. Me? Well, I like to eat it straight from the bottle!

I'm sure everyone reading this has had Hershey's Chocolate Syrup. Good stuff! But did you ever take a look at the label? I'm not exactly a health nut (I have a blog about chocolate, after all), but once I learned how to make my own chocolate syrup, I had to wonder, what is some of the stuff on the ingredients list of Hershey's syrup?

Take a look.

The first ingredient is high fructose corn syrup. I'm pretty sure I don't need to tell you how bad that is for you. It's not regular corn syrup. It's really bad for you, and it's in so many things today. In fact, here's an article called "5 Reasons HFCS Will Kill You."

Next ingredient is corn syrup, followed by water, cocoa, and sugar. Those make sense. Then it gets crazy.

Potassium sorbate. This is a synthetic preservative. While it does occur naturally in some berries, virtually all of the world's supply is manufactured synthetically.

Salt. You know what that is.

Mono and Diglycerides. These are emulsifying agents. They help keep the product from separating into its individual ingredients and add a little shelf life to it.

Xantham Gum. Another emulsifier. Just like the mono and diglycerides, it's relatively safe to eat, but if you like knowing what you're eating, it's something extra you don't need.

Polysorbate 60. Another emulsifier. Seriously, how many emulsifiers does one product need? I suspect these emulsifiers keep the syrup flowing smoothly, as well.

Vanillin. This is vanilla flavor, basically. It's the chemical in vanilla that makes the vanilla flavor. However, in this product, it's probably synthetically created because it's much cheaper than using real vanilla.

Finally, artificial flavor. As far as I can tell, this is a "chemical mixture that mimics a natural flavor in some way." So yeah, have fun with that.

It's sad that something as simple as chocolate syrup literally has to become a chemistry lesson to learn what's in it. Does it really have to be that complicated? Heck no! In fact, if we take a look at the list of ingredients in Hershey's syrup and keep only the things we understand, it's perfect! Well, let's scratch off the corn syrup, too. We know what that is, it's used a lot in candy making, but we only need one sweetener here.

Chocolate syrup ingredient list:

4 oz hot water
1/2 cup sugar
2/3 cup natural cocoa powder

And, if you want:

Pinch of salt (optional)
1 tsp vanilla (optional)

And you'll need a bottle like the one pictured here.






The best thing about making chocolate syrup yourself is the flavor! You can choose any cocoa powder you want. There are many artisanal chocolate makers out there creating some of the best, tastiest cocoa powders ever. I'm using Scharffen Berger Natural Cocoa Powder.

Interesting that they put the word natural right there on the label. Why would they need to make a distinction from any other cocoa powder? Well, because most cocoa powder is Dutch-processed, or alkalized. To quote Askinosie Chocolate's Facebook page: "Alkalization (also called “Dutch processing”) is a chemical processing of cocoa powder. Chocolate makers do this to create a uniform color and flavor when mixing various origins together and to tame the flavor by reducing the acidity. Unfortunately, this process strips away the complexity of flavor and removes many of the beneficial compounds naturally found in chocolate, not to mention fails to maintain the integrity of the origin, which is one of our main goals as single origin chocolate makers!"

When they mention origin, they mean the cacao bean. Cacao beans from different places around the world and different trees all have different flavors. To artisanal chocolate makers, the origin of the bean is incredibly important! That's what separates them from the mass-market cheap stuff (like the folks who make chocolate syrup loaded with emulsifiers).

Some cocoa powders I would recommend:

Askinosie

Tcho

Varlhona

Scharffen Berger

Ok, let's get to making this stuff already!

Put the water in a pot on medium heat.

In a bowl, mix the cocoa powder and the sugar. Cocoa powder on its own has a tough time blending into water, so mixing it beforehand with the sugar will help a lot.

Once the water is hot, but not boiling, slowly add in the powder mix while you whisk. Keep whisking while the sugar melts and everything dissolves nicely and becomes delicious, amazing chocolate syrup. If you want to add vanilla or a pinch of salt, now would be the time. Don't let the mixture boil, just whisk until it's smooth.

Turn off the heat and let it cool. I like to keep whisking slowly while it cools.

Once it's cool, go ahead and pour it into your dispenser. Or pour some right into some warm milk for a great hot chocolate!

It may thicken or solidify slightly in the bottle, since we've left out all those emulsifiers that keep it smooth and runny. Just pop it in the microwave for 10 seconds and you're good to go.

Or, you could even pour it into a jar instead of a bottle, and simply spoon portions out whenever you want some.

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!

Recipe - Giada De Laurentiis' Strawberry Hot Chocolate

I struggled a bit with this one. Not about making it - I was very excited to make it after seeing it on Giada De Laurentiis' daytime Food Network show Giada at Home. I took notes while watching the show, gathered the ingredients, took pictures as I went along, and finally took a sip of the completed hot chocolate.

Hmm... It wasn't that great. It was barely good.

So now what? I made this drink, my fiance had taken the time to help setup the beautiful pictures, and now this. I wanted my blog to only deliver top quality hot chocolates, the best I could find or think of, and this certainly wasn't that. I was going to scrap it.

My fiance convinced me that I should post about it anyway. So please keep reading if you saw that episode of Giada's show and thought "Wow, that sounds yummy!"

This sounded amazing when Giada made it on her show, and very healthy, as well. I think maybe that's more of what she was going for. Something healthy for the kids, something not filled with sugar and sweeteners.

Here's the ingredient list:

12 strawberries
3 cups unsweetened vanilla almond milk
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 tbsp agave
1 tbsp chopped dark chocolate

Some of these ingredients are new to the blog, so let's take a look at them.

The base in this one, rather than milk or water, is almond milk.

Almond milk typically comes in a few varieties: sweetened, unsweetened, vanilla, original, and combinations of those. Regular almond milk is made from almonds and water, with a few other minor ingredients, and it really does taste like almonds. It's pretty good. For plain drinking, I much prefer the sweetened vanilla flavor. I plan on using almond milk in the future for dairy-free hot chocolate recipes.

As a sweetener, Giada uses agave nectar. It tastes very much like honey, and has the consistency of maple syrup. Pretty good stuff, but a little research online shows that while agave is being pushed as a natural, healthy sweetener, it is anything but.



Many articles out there talk about how it is most definitely not a natural sweetener, and that the body processes it in the same way it does high fructose corn syrup. If this bothers you, definitely do some more research on it. There's tons out there.

I'm using organic strawberries from a local farmer's market. Make sure you wash them good. Rather than rinsing berries under the faucet, a better way to wash them is to put them into a large bowl and fill it with water. Swish them around in it for a minute or so, then drain. That's a much more thorough washing!

The cocoa powder I'm using is from Askinosie Chocolate. It's from beans grown in Davao in the Philippines. Askinosie makes amazing chocolate and chocolate products, and I reviewed their sipping chocolate a while back.

The dark chocolate I'm using is some 70% from Scharffen Berger Chocolate. Great stuff!

Cut all the green tops off the strawberries (discard those) and put all the ingredients into a blender. Blend until it's all liquid.

This recipe makes a lot, so if you make it, be sure and have a small pitcher or some Tupperware handy to keep the rest in. And of course, keep it refrigerated.

Pour it into a pan to heat it up. I'm only heating one serving. Don't let it boil, just get it close, and keep stirring while you heat it.

And there we go, Giada's strawberry hot chocolate. Topped with some fresh whipped cream, slices of strawberry, and chocolate shavings. What do you think? Do you agree with me, it's not that great?

With all that being said, I think this is my opportunity to begin working on a strawberry hot chocolate of my own. One that packs all the amazing chocolaty flavor it should, with tangy, sweet strawberry flavor not hiding in there, but sharing the spotlight.

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.)

Recipe - Double Spiced Hot Chocolate

This recipe, in my opinion, is the ultimate relaxing hot chocolate.

The "double spices" in the name are cinnamon and cloves. I was originally introduced to this recipe in Michael Turback's book "Hot Chocolate". There's a ton of great recipes in this book, and I'll be going over a lot of them. I've made a couple tiny changes to my version of this recipe from what he has in the book, but for the most part, they're close to the same.

When I was growing up, every Christmas, my mother would push cloves into lemons and leave them in bowls around the house. It smelled so good! This hot chocolate captures a bit of that, along with the comfort of being indoors, nice and warm, on a cold night.

Put some slippers on and get out your whisk. Here's what we need to make this:

1 cup milk (2% or whole)
3 oz chopped bittersweet chocolate (60%-77%)
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp powdered sugar

 I'm using Scharffen Berger 70% bittersweet chocolate. This is my favorite chocolate to chop and use for hot chocolate recipes, both their 70% and their 62%. Where I live, I can usually find the bars in the baking section of some grocery stores. If they're not available in any stores by you, they are worth ordering online. For now, though, use whatever dark chocolate you have.

I also made a whipped cream to top this with, since I've run out of homemade marshmallows. Just 1/2 a cup of heavy cream, and about halfway through whipping it I added 1 tsp of vanilla and just under 1 tbsp of powdered sugar. That's a tasty, basic whipped cream. Just whip it until it becomes fluffy. Usually I use my electric beaters and it goes pretty quickly. This time I tried it with a whisk. Ugh. Never again! Electricity is awesome.

Heat up the milk, as usual, to just below boiling. While it's warming, I measure out the rest of the ingredients. The chocolate first, then I just drop the spices right into the measuring cup with the chocolate. Once the milk is ready to go, pour it all in slowly while whisking.

That clove and cinnamon is going to smell strong and delicious! If it's too strong and thick for your tastes, try 2 oz of chocolate instead of 3 oz.

I garnished it with the whipped cream, a little chopped chocolate, and a stick of cinnamon (which fell into the cup as the whipped cream melted). Served with some shortbread cookies, this is the most amazing thing when sitting down in the evening to read a good book or watch a favorite movie.