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 - Shamrock Peppermint Hot Chocolate

St. Patrick's Day! What do you know about St. Patrick? Did you know he lived in the 5th century and was brought to Ireland as a slave when he was 16 years old? Did you know that it's believed a silver container was crafted to hold St. Patrick's severed arm? Neither did I! History is insane!

When I was growing up, St. Patrick's Day pretty much meant McDonald's would start serving their Shamrock Shake. I haven't had one in years, but since that minty, creamy flavor is a great memory for me around this time of year, I thought I'd try to recreate it in a hot chocolate.

 The ingredients are pretty simple:

¾ cup heavy whipping cream
¾ cup 2% milk
5 tbsp white chocolate, chopped
1 heaping tsp powdered sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp peppermint extract
2 drops green food coloring

I'm using Ghirardelli premium white baking chocolate. Besides the cocoa butter and sugar, it has nonfat dry milk and milk fat in it, which makes it not the best white chocolate available. But it works fine for this recipe.

The peppermint extract I picked up at a local grocer, and the vanilla extract is some I found from Madecasse. Madecasse is an amazing chocolate maker in Madagascar. Top notch products!








The blend of 2% milk and heavy cream gives it a wonderful creaminess, and the powdered sugar adds a little extra sweetness. If you get a really good white chocolate, you could try leaving out the sugar and half the vanilla.

Warm the milk and cream on the stovetop. Once it's pretty hot, add the sugar first and whisk it around a bit, let it start dissolving. As the milk gets close to boiling, add in the chopped white chocolate. Once that's incorporated smoothly, add the vanilla and peppermint extracts, and finish with the food coloring.

It's St Patrick's Day. It's important that it be green. Add 3 drops if you're feeling crazy!

I'm serving mine topped with some homemade vanilla whipped cream, green sugar sprinkles, and a clover. Minty, smooth, and rich!

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!