Recipe - Mill Creek 70% Drinking Chocolate

One of my favorite ways to enjoy chocolate is by creating drinking chocolates from artisanal chocolate bars. Not only is a great way to experience the subtleties of the chocolate someone spent a great deal of effort creating, but it also gives you a much more enjoyable hot chocolate experience than the typical overly-sweet cocoa packets.

I hadn't heard of Mill Creek until recently, but I always buy new bars when I find them. I'm very glad I picked this one up. I thought this chocolate delivered on every level. Clean and elegant packaging, with a beautiful bar inside.

Mill Creek Cacao Roasters was founded in 2011 in Salt Lake City, UT, by Mark DelVecchio and Dana Brewster. This bar is made with Ecuadorian Arriba Nacional cacao, which, if you taste it (and you should!), has plenty of flavor nuances. It's also an heirloom cacao, recognized by the Heirloom Cacao Preservation Initiative of the Fine Chocolate Industry Association in New York. That's a long way of saying this cacao is widely recognized as having a very fine flavor that is worth preserving.

What a gorgeous bar!

Very simple ingredients that I think come through very nicely. The added cocoa butter, being a fat, helps make the drink a little smoother and creamier.

Also in the package is a little card from Dana and Mark telling you about Mill Creek and this specific cacao. It's a nice touch, especially if you're into that kind of thing. And with chocolate this good, you should be.

I chopped up the bar for easier melting. Be sure to sample it as you're chopping it up. It's a great way to preview what the drink will be. This bar is a bit sweeter than I thought it would be, since I'm used to 70% bars being on the bitter end of the flavor spectrum.

I used about 1½ cups of 2% milk. If you have whole milk, that's fine too, but try not to use half & half or heavy cream for this one. With a fine chocolate like this, the thicker the milk you use, the more the flavor of the chocolate will be muted. 2% will really let the flavor come through.

The drink is great! Chocolatey and rich, but not too dark. If I hadn't made this myself, I would have guessed it was made with a milk chocolate bar, not a 70% bar. You can also choose to serve yours with gourmet marshmallows or homemade whipped cream, but I decided not to garnish with anything. I wanted to really enjoy the chocolate Mill Creek created, and I certainly did.