Lil' Hot Cocoa Fest - Plush Puffs, Burbank, CA

How exciting is this? Starting on Friday, Feb 8th, Plush Puffs in Burbank, CA, will be having Burbank's first hot chocolate festival, the Lil' Hot Cocoa Fest! I've had the pleasure of working with owner Ann Hickey on coming up with some of the fun and unique flavors they'll be serving, a different one each day.

Some of these recipes I've worked here on the blog, others I dialed in specifically for the festival, and others Ann and her team came up with. It's so exciting to know that people are going to be able to walk in and order some of these amazing hot chocolates! Here's a list of the flavors that will be available:

• Peanut Butter Hot Cocoa
• Mexican Almond Hot Cocoa
• Cinnamon Bun Hot Cocoa
• Dark Chocolate Kentucky Bourbon Cocoa
• Sipping Chocolate (using Dandelion Ecuador 70%)
• Chai Spice Hot Cocoa

Most will be paired with a select flavor Plush Puff's amazing marshmallows, which, if you have never tried, you are in for a treat! In fact, I've featured their marshmallows here on the blog before.







If you can make it to the shop and want someone to chat chocolate with, send me a message, maybe I can swing by and hang out for a little! You can reach me through this blog or through my Instagram.

The Lil' Hot Cocoa Fest goes from Feb 8-15 over at Plush Puffs Cafe & Toasting Bar, located at 3811 W. Magnolia Blvd Burbank, CA 91505. They're open Tues - Sat 8am-8pm, Sun 12-7pm, and closed on Mondays. Hope to see you there! If you go, let me know how your experience was! Wouldn't it be incredible to be able to continue this as an annual tradition? Let's make it a success!

My Favorite Hot Chocolates of 2018

Since starting this blog, I get asked all the time what my favorite hot chocolate is, or can I please recommend something to get as a gift for someone. Well, yes, yes I can recommend something! Whatever the occasion is that you need an amazing hot chocolate, I'm here to help! Below are my thoughts on some of my favorites and you can decide for yourself which might be the one you're looking for. They are not in any particular order, and I've included a variety of types and flavors, and I'll keep it short and sweet. You just cannot go wrong with the drinking chocolates I've included here! Enjoy!

Bean to Bar Drinking Chocolates

Askinosie Sipping Chocolate
Askinosie is one of my favorite chocolate makers, and I've reviewed their drinking chocolate before. It's a perfect example of what makes bean-to-bar chocolate amazing. Dark and rich, it's a wonderful introduction into the world of bean-to-bar drinking chocolates.

Mutari Craft Chocolate
Mutari only makes bean-to-bottle drinking chocolates, no bars. It's amazing, and if you get a set with a few flavors, you'll really enjoy the differences between them. Not overly sweet, it's perfect for a serious chocolate lover. And I think they may change their flavor offerings, so check back once in a while!

Dick Taylor Drinking Chocolate
Dick Taylor is an icon in the craft chocolate world, and their drinking chocolate is top notch. Before they even offered drinking chocolates for sale, I was making it from their bars. If you like your hot chocolate a little more on the tangy and very rich side, this is the one for you.



Potomac Chocolate
Potomac is my favorite chocolate maker. The whole company is just one guy, Ben, working out of his basement. The flavors he captures in his bars are just amazing, and he's carried that over wonderfully to his drinking chocolates. And the Spiced variety packs a bit of heat!

Gourmet Drinking Chocolates

MarieBelle Hot Chocolate
This is the hot chocolate that got me started on my adventures with chocolate. It was one of my very first posts here on Melting Mug, and is still one of my favorite hot chocolates out there. If you're buying this as a gift for someone, I'd recommend sticking with their original Aztec mix. This one is actually one of my favorites gifts to give during the holidays.

Jacques Torres Wicked Hot Chocolate
This spicy hot chocolate is from celebrity chef and world renown chocolatier Jacques Torres. When choosing a spicy hot chocolate for my list, I had a tough time deciding between this one and Chuao. Both are exceptional and have a fiery kick to them, and you can't go wrong with either. You can even get this Wicked Hot Chocolate as a cool gift set with mugs!

Chuao Spicy Maya Drinking Chocolate
Ok, so yeah, I have to include this one anyway. There's plenty of room on this list for two spicy hot chocolates. This was the first spicy drinking chocolate I ever tried, and it's wonderful. It finishes really hot, though, so if you like spicy things, this is your drink!

Powder Mix Hot Chocolates

Chocolat Moderne Kama Sutra
This mix absolutely blew me away the first time I tasted it, and it's still possibly the most relaxing chocolate drink I've ever enjoyed. It's a day at the spa in a can! The spice combination in the Kama Sutra mix is heavenly, and just smelling it will make you want to put on fluffy slippers and settle in next to the fireplace.

Lake Champlain Hot Chocolates
Lake Champlain's mixes are some of my favorites to keep at work, where I don't always have the time to melt solid chocolate in hot milk. Sadly, it doesn't look like they still make their Chai & Mighty flavor, but their other flavors are great, too.

Mexican Hot Chocolates

La Soledad Hot Chocolates
This is as authentic as you can get, so much so that your have to order it from Mexico. I'd advise grabbing either the almond (almondrado) or the cinnamon (canela). Package it up with a traditional molinillo for frothing the chocolate and you've got an amazing gift set! You can read my review of this drink here.

Taza Stone Ground Chocolate
Taza is made the same way traditional Mexican chocolate is, stone ground and organic. They're based in Somerville, MA, so a little bit easier to order than the La Soledad. Their sampler pack has an amazing variety, and each disc is perfectly sized for a mug of drinking chocolate!

Chocolate Syrup

Abuelita Chocolate Cinnamon Syrup
I know, I know - it's made by Nestlé. If you've read my blog before, you know I tend to stay away from the giant corporate chocolate makers. However, the ingredients here aren't packed with chemicals, and the flavor is a wonderful variation when reaching for a chocolate milk. I wouldn't have it on this list if I didn't love it.

Make your own!
A while back I posted a super simple recipe for making your own, and not only is it one of the tastiest I've had, you can use it on everything from hot and cold drinking chocolates to ice cream and pies. Check it out here, and keep in mind you can use your favorite cocoa powder to make it your own. Also, your friends will be thrilled that you made it yourself!

Marshmallows

Marshmallow Madness!
If you've never tried homemade marshmallows, oh wow, you NEED this book! Making marshmallows is easier than you might think, and so worth it. And again, it's one of those gifts that your friends and family will be amazed by. I mean, who gives out homemade marshmallows? you do, that's who!

Review - Dagoba Drinking Chocolates

Dagoba chocolate is a product I've been seeing turn up more and more in my local grocery stores. I started seeing it first in the baking chocolates, and later saw their drinking chocolates pop up in the hot cocoa aisle. Being a "Star Wars" fan my entire life, how could I not be drawn to this chocolate!?

As always, we're going to enjoy a couple of their drinking chocolates for the review, but I did also grab their 100% unsweetened chocolate. It has a couple other ingredients in minuscule amounts (soy lecithin and milk), but it is still a very nice chocolate to work with.

I picked up both the Authentic and the Xocolatl drinking chocolates. The Authentic is simply their dark hot chocolate, while the Xocolatl is flavored to represent the ancient Mexican drinking chocolates with some added cinnamon and chili.

There's a small label on all their products showing a little frog. This is the Rainforest Alliance logo, and it's there because Dagoba is all about sustainability. Taking care of the environment, the cacao workers, and their cacao farms. I'm all for this! If cacao isn't sustained, that would mean no chocolate. That's not a world I want to live in!

The ingredients on both products are nice and simple. A great, straight forward mix. It just seems so unnecessary to add in all the extra preservatives and stuff that most store bought hot chocolates have in them, especially once you taste a chocolate like this. So much more real chocolate flavor! 

Their instructions actually made me laugh a little. What a pleasant way to describe the act of heating milk and scooping this chocolate into it! "When vapors rise, the milk will be at its most receptive to accept the chocolate into its embrace". Seriously, how awesome is that! 

The mix itself has nice chunks of real chocolate in it, which is great. Having the actual bits of whole chocolate in there is a definite improvement over mixes that only have cocoa powder. The fat (cocoa butter) from the chocolate really makes a difference in the smoothness.

By the way, did you know what Dagoba means? A dagoba is a shrine for sacred relics in the Far East, usually pertaining to Buddha. Kind of makes sense that George Lucas used it for the name of the planet where the wise Jedi Master Yoda was living in "The Empire Strikes Back".

The Authentic has a rich, almost smoky flavor. Nice dark notes, but not bitter - it still manages to be sweet. And as I always recommend, you can use just a little of the mix for a nice lighter breakfast hot chocolate, and then in the evening, use a lot for a rich after-dinner dessert drink.

The Xocolatl is spicy, but not uncomfortably so. It's a very nice heat. The cinnamon is not as forward in this mix as in some other Mexican chocolates, but it's there, and it's a great addition. It'd be great to see Dagoba add a little more cinnamon to this mix and really make it pop!

Both of these chocolates are wonderful and worth picking up. Dagoba drinking chocolates are a perfect replacement for those packets of powdered milk disguised as hot cocoa you're keeping in your cupboard or office. Hopefully there's a gourmet grocery store near you that carries them, but if not, you can always grab them at Dagoba's website. They have a couple other flavors there, as well, like Chai, which sounds great!

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.

Review - La Soledad Canela Hot Chocolate

I had a tough time deciding which Mexican hot chocolate to review first. There are a ton of them! I wanted to review a very authentic one first, but I also wanted to introduce them the way I was introduced to them. It turns out, the first one I ever had was a pretty darn authentic one, La Soledad Canela flavored hot chocolate.

 

Unlike most American packaged hot chocolates, this isn't a powder mix, it's a solid chocolate tablet. That's how most traditional Mexican hot chocolates comes, as a tablet. Another staple of Mexican hot chocolates is cinnamon. They almost all seem to have it, which certainly isn't a bad thing. And a few of them often have nutty flavors, as well.



La Soledad makes quite a few other varieties of hot chocolate, but what I have here is the canela (Spanish for cinnamon).

They're a Mexican company, located in Oaxaca (wa-HOCK-a), Mexico. Oaxaca is known for cacao, used in mole sauces and as a beverage. So, yeah, this is good, authentic stuff. 

My girlfriend discovered this hot chocolate while doing a project with some Mexican and Aztec influences. She wanted to serve Mexican hot chocolate at the presentation, and found a place in Eagle Rock, CA, called Cacao Mexicatessan that sold this. Not only do they serve amazing food there, but they sell all kinds of imported products from Mexico, mostly cacao things.

The chocolate tablets are molded with La Soledad's logo and individually foil wrapped.

As usual, when I have a big chunk of chocolate to melt into some milk or water, I chop it up pretty thoroughly. Most Mexican chocolate tablets have a coarse, grainy texture. You may find that it doesn't melt completely, leaving grains at the bottom of the cup. That could be cinnamon, or perhaps it's the stone ground cacao. Whatever it is, it's fine to eat it if you want to. If it's the cacao, it's actually good for you!

Let's talk about another thing the Mexicans do with their hot chocolate - frothing!

Frothing is whipping the chocolate until a foam covers the surface. Before the Spanish reached Mexico in the 16th century, hot chocolate drinks were frothed by pouring them from one pitcher to another over and over. The Spaniards then invented the wooden tool pictured here, the molinillo. You hold the top of it between your palms and spin it back and forth, and it whips the liquid up into a perfect, yummy froth.

I have another frother, an electric one with its own pitcher, and I'll highlight that in a future blog post. For now, I wanted to keep it traditional and do it the old fashioned way.

La Soledad Canela hot chocolate is nice and light, a perfect breakfast or afternoon hot chocolate. In Mexico, hot chocolate is traditionally served with pan dulce, which are sweet breads that come in many varieties. I even found a great handmade and painted Mexican mug!
 
I couldn't find La Soledad on Amazon, so as far as I know, the only way to get it is to swing by Cacao Mexicatessan and pick some up, or to order it from their website, which requires that you email them about the products you want.

Do you know of any Mexican hot chocolates? Which is your favorite? I have an entire cupboard full, and I'll get to reviewing them all eventually, but please comment below and let me know your favorites. Or even better, a recipe!

La Soledad's website
http://www.chocolatedeoaxaca.com.mx