Review - Potomac Drinking Chocolate

Finally I get to talk about my favorite chocolate maker! Potomac Chocolate has been my favorite since I first tried a bar around 2011, and it's basically just one man, Ben Rasmussen. Originally working out of his basement, he now has a retail shop in Occoquan, VA. He's got single origin bars, milk chocolate bars, flavored bars, cocoa spreads, and even bonbons! It's been a fun adventure watching his small operation grow over the past few years, and his chocolate has remained consistent and absolutely amazing.

You already know I'm a fan of chopping up your favorite chocolate bar and making a drink out of it, but it sure is nice when the chocolate maker does the work for you and offers packets of drink mix. I ordered both the Duarte (Dominican Republic) single origin and the Spiced drinking chocolate.

Also, as I was only enjoying a cup for myself, I cut the directions in half.

First up is the Duarte. You can see what it looks like out of the package. This is real drinking chocolate! I made it with 2% milk. It is, literally, just a cup of bean-to-bar ganache. Very thick, rich, and perfect. The flavors Ben is creating over there in Woodbridge come right through, and are not overpowering or too strong. This is my favorite kind of drinking chocolate, where you can truly taste the artisanal quality.

Sometimes with strong, thick drinking chocolates, when I've finished, I find myself kind of exhausted on sweets for a bit. That's not the case with Potomac. I finished the cup and it was just right.

The ingredients are as pure as the bars - two simple things.

The Duarte has a prominent chocolate fudge flavor, I thought. The tasting notes say "cocoa and red fruit", and I think with the milk preparation, the cocoa really comes through the most. Sometimes when I make a cold chocolate milk, I'll simply use cocoa powder and honey, which really lets the cocoa flavor shine through, unlike the overly sweet, processed flavor of making chocolate milk with store bought syrup. This cup of Duarte reminded me of that, but amplified with the amazing flavor subtleties Potomac is known for. It's definitely got the complexity of a bean-to-bar chocolate, but it's not hitting you over the head with tangy notes or astringent bitterness. This is, of course, why I think Potomac is my favorite maker to begin with. Ben really captures the perfect balance of the specific flavors of the cacao bean while retaining a classic note of dark chocolate.

I wonder if the red fruit will come through more with the water preparation? We'll get to that in a bit.

A couple of years ago I picked up the green mug I'm using here, back before Ben was even making drinking chocolates. The original packaging was a pleasant green wrapper with the now-iconic fish, each bar having a slightly different shade, and this mug matched perfectly. It felt right to still use it, even though the packaging has changed a few times since then. In fact, the packaging has changed yet again since I took these photos! In my memory, I still see Potomac Chocolate as that light shade of green.

Here you can see a variety of Ben's bars: his production line from a few years ago, a few bars of his then-brand-new Cuyagua, Venezuela bar, and a few test bars while he was working out the Cuyagua production. These were a Kickstarter reward!

Now on to the Spiced drinking chocolate!

Again I cut the directions in half, using a digital kitchen scale to measure out half of the 85 grams in the package (well, roughly half). Checking the ingredient list shows you exactly the spices added to the chocolate.

   

It also came out thick like a European drinking chocolate. In my opinion, this means it's a chocolate you should slow down and enjoy, to sip like a dessert. This isn't something you'd grab with a donut, or in a to-go cup as you run out the door. This is an event. This is like opening an expensive bottle of wine (if you're into wine).

I served mine with some rolled wafer cookies and a small variety of Plush Puffs marshmallows, but once I began enjoying it, I savored it by itself. The chocolate needed nothing else.

The Spiced absolutely lived up to expectations. It's wonderful. The package doesn't list the origin of the bean, but I suspect it is the same Duarte bean as the other drinking chocolate. It's fudgey and rich, barely sweetened, and the spice is perfect!


The sea salt, cinnamon, and Aleppo chili pepper, while simple ingredients, add such complexity to this drink. It's got some heat for sure, but it's not the kind of heat that leaves you gasping for cool air afterwards. It's measured and careful, really something different.

So now to try these out with other styles of preparation, the first being my favorite way for most drinking chocolates. I used a full mug of 2% milk and the remaining 41 grams of the Spiced chocolate, which is a very different ratio of liquid to chocolate from what is advised in the instructions. It made a more traditional American style serving of hot chocolate.

And naturally, it's delightful this way. Not strong and powerful, not a concentrated, thick drinking chocolate. Also not very sweet, and the chocolate flavor is still comes through perfectly, along with all the nuances in flavor from the bean-to-bar process. The spice still hits pretty hard, too, giving it a finish to remember.

If I could change anything about it, I'd actually love for the chocolate to be the more prominent flavor rather than the spices. I just love what Ben does with chocolate so much, I want it to be the star. I could probably create that myself by simply making a mixture of the Duarte and the Spiced, or by chopping up a solid bar and adding some of that in.

 I made my last portion of the Duarte with water as instructed on the package. Wow, it's intense and chocolatey, and there's that sharp red fruit tang I was expecting in the earlier preparations! Not overpowering, though, which is very pleasant. Many water based drinking chocolates are strong and sweet and like a punch of concentrated flavor. This one, while more intense than the milk varieties, is not overly strong or sweet. And the portion size recommended on the instructions is just right.

Also part of Kickstarter rewards from years past were t-shirts emblazoned with the current logos and a little crocheted fish! Ben's wife Cyndi made these as an extra bonus during one of the Kickstarter campaigns, and I had to get the green one! I've also been taking the used wrappers and creating laminated bookmarks from them. I've even made some from the older original green packaging. As an avid reader, I can think of no better way to show off wrappers and share my love of craft chocolate!

      

Overall, Potomac Drinking chocolates are a delight, and in my opinion, one of the best in the world. If you love (or are interested in trying) bean-to-bar hot chocolates, you will love this drink. Go get some at the website, and follow them on Instagram. Send a message to Ben, and tell him Melting Mug sent you!

Recipe - Alton Brown's Reloaded Cocoa Syrup

I very much enjoy making my own chocolate syrup. Much like making homemade marshmallows, it elevates it to a whole new level and makes it extra delicious. I also enjoy basically everything Alton Brown does. His show Good Eats has been one of my favorite shows for years. A year or so ago, Mr. Brown started revisiting certain episodes, updating the recipes and techniques, and calling it Good Eats: Reloaded. He's done a few chocolate episodes, and once I got them on my DVR, I refuse to delete them! One of them is The Art of Darkness II: The Reload. In it, he updated his chocolate syrup recipe, and I just had to give it a try!

Here's the ingredients:

3 cups sugar
1½ cup water
2 tbsp corn syrup
1½ cup Dutch-processed cocoa powder
¼ tsp salt
1 tbsp vanilla extract
2 tsp ground black cardamom

The tricky part of that ingredient list is the black cardamom. It takes a bit of preparation, but please do it!

It's SO worth it!

And no, the cardamom you already have is probably not black cardamom.

Black cardamom is different from the typical cardamom spice shaker found in most kitchens. Regular cardamom is actually green cardamom. I had to order the black cardamom online from a spice company, I grabbed it HERE.

The black cardamom comes as whole pods, so you have to grind it yourself. You can either throw them in a spice grinder, if you have one, or use a mortar and pestle, which is what I have. First I cracked open the pods and pulled off the fibrous husks, leaving only the little black spheres inside. They kind of look like peppercorns. Once you've got them ground in your device of choice, sift them to make sure you get all the little fibrous bits out.

Put the water, sugar, and corn syrup in a saucepan and get it boiling. While it's heating, in your food processor, put in the cocoa powder and salt. Give it a few pulses to start getting it blended.

Once the sugar mixture is boiling and not cloudy, and with the lid on your food processor, turn the processor on and slowly pour the hot liquid into the feed tube. Once it's all in, add the vanilla and the black cardamom.

Let it cool for 10 or 20 minutes in the food processor bowl, then use a funnel and pour it into squeeze bottles. I was able to fill 3 bottles. You can keep them in the fridge, or even freeze some and thaw them as needed.

Have you tasted it yet? I was tasting it right out of the processor bowl! Wow, it's SO GOOD! The first taste, I was a little surprised at the flavor the black cardamom brought to it, but then I just couldn't stop tasting it. I still can't! Every time I'm in the kitchen, I have a spoonful.

I'm not sure how to describe it. Try to imagine allspice but with hints of mint and clove. I guess that might be close, although it's a bit more complex than that.

I've been making cold chocolate milk with this, the same way I would make chocolate milk with any other syrup. Wow, what a wonderful, spiced flavor! It's also very aromatic, which is a delight when mixing up a simple glass of chocolate milk. Definitely let's you know you've got something special happening. 

This recipe has me so excited, I want to do all kinds of variations on it. I'd like to try one where the cocoa powder ratio is 50% of the other ingredients. I'd like to try one where I reduce the black cardamom by half, and one where I add a touch of cinnamon, or maybe allspice, ginger, or nutmeg. So much to explore!

If you give it a try, please let me know what you think! And thanks, Alton! 

Review - ZenBunni Chocolate

 

Well, this chocolate was certainly an learning adventure. I hope you're ready for something you've never heard of before, because this is about as original as it gets. Here in Los Angeles there's a trendy little street called Abbot Kinney. Lots of artsy places, stores carrying handcrafted products, and a coffee shop or two. And, happily, a little cubby hole of a chocolate shop called ZenBunni.

ZenBunni is a biodynamic chocolate company in Venice, CA, established in 2007. This was the first time I've ever come across the word biodynamic in relation to chocolate. Reading their website about how they source all their ingredients, I learned that biodynamic farming involves spraying the soil with crystal-infused water and takes into account the "influences and the rhythms of the sun, moon, and planets". The name ZenBunni comes directly from the two founders, Bunni and Zen. Everything they use is organic, raw, vegan, gluten free, and free of any refined sugars. Yep, I said raw. Meaning they do not roast their cocoa beans. And when they grind them, they do it slower, so the temperature doesn't get as high as it does with typical cacao processing. Heck, they even use omnidegradable packaging with vegetable ink!

The packages also have little descriptions on them of symptoms or issues that each chocolate should help with. For example, Mocha Mucha says it helps with fat burning, brain activating, cardiovascular protection, and increasing energy. I'm not sure if a tiny chocolate bar can really help with these types of things, but hey, who am I to judge.



I picked up a few bars during my first visit. Mucha Mocha, which includes biodynamic and organic hand-ground espresso, maple crystals, 70% cacao, and cane jaggery (and seems to now be called Mystic Mocha). Kathmandu Chai has biodynamic and organic ashwaganda, tulsi, vanilla, zenbunni chai spices, 70% cacao, and cane jaggery. Lavender Lamuria, which contains biodynamic and organic lavender flowers, salt, lavender labyrinth oil, 70% cacao, and cane jaggery.

So you can see there's a lot of unconventional ingredients in there. Not that this is a bad thing, of course. It's kind of neat and fun. The flavors are definitely original and the chocolate itself has a nice, not too sweet flavor. While all the ones I picked up were 70% chocolate, they taste like they could be 75%. Hopefully you also noticed in those ingredient lists above, instead of sugar, they are sweetened with cane jaggery. Basically, it's the boiled and reduced juice from sugar cane. Same raw materials as regular sugar, just not refined as much.

The bars are tiny, which makes them a bit expensive for their size, since they are $3 a bar.









I'm using two bars of their Original Topanga to make a drinking chocolate. While making the drink, it created an excellent froth, even though I used 2% milk. I tend to think a good froth is a result of using real chocolate, because the cocoa butter is still in there, which is the fat of the cacao bean. I have no idea if that's correct, it just seems to be what I've discovered. If I use cocoa powder as the main chocolate ingredient in a drink, it never froths. If I use whole chocolate, it usually will.

The drink is delicious! It's not very sweet and has a slight nuttiness, with just the slightest notes of almond. It also has a very creamy flavor, typical of drinks where I add some heavy cream to the milk. It's very pleasant to drink, and would make a wonderful midday or after dinner drinking chocolate.

And at this point, I was actually going to publish this post. Then, before I could, at my wife's workplace Christmas dinner, her coworker Angela surprised us with gifts of ZenBunni's actual packaged drinking chocolate! When I had visited, they hadn't yet been making this product. We left with the Kathmandu Chai Coco. I've enjoyed chai-infused drinking chocolates here on the blog before, and once I opened this package, like the other ones, I was blown away! The aroma of that chocolate mixed with the complexity of the chai spices is just magical. 

The packaging is extraordinary! Amazing artwork on the front, while the back has a bit of a Harry Potter feel, complete with a magical tale of creating the drink in a stupa high in the mountains overlooking Kathmandu.

In the instructions, they mention adding in a touch of grass fed butter or ghee. I made it as recommended, and even added that spoonful of butter made from the milk of grass fed cows.

Wow, creamy and amazing! Putting the butter in, I was a bit skeptical that I would be able to notice it, but in the time since my first mug of the drink, I've made it without the butter, and I really think it made it much creamier. It's really a wonderful drink, very relaxing and aromatic, and definitely out of the range of ordinary hot chocolates. They also have a Shiva Rose Coco, and I can't wait to have a sip of that! 

This drinking chocolate is definitely recommended, and if you order, be sure and mention you heard about them here on Melting Mug. And if you try it, please come back and let me know what you thought of it. 

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.