Other Chocolate Things, Part One

Being obsessed with chocolate is awesome!

Everywhere I go, I'm on the lookout for new chocolates or chocolate things of any kind. I have a large, ever-changing pantry of artisan chocolate bars, and the different flavors and types of chocolates out there is amazing.

And then once in a while, I come across chocolate things that aren't chocolate bars. That's what this post is about. It's not hot chocolates, but if you like chocolate like I do, I think you'll find it interesting anyway. 

When I first became interested in how chocolate is made, I did what I usually do to learn about something - I bought a book. The New Taste of Chocolate: A Cultural & Natural History of Cacao with Recipes by Maricel E. Presilla is a great book, covering the history of cacao, how it's processed to become chocolate, and even some of the modern science of everything involved with cacao. It's filled with pictures, and in back there some recipes, including a couple for hot chocolate.

Chocolate music? Yep! Well, the music from the places where cacao is grown, which I guess is as close as you can get. Music from the Chocolate Lands was released by Putumayo, and it's really fun! Music from places like Belium, Peru, India, Mexico, and lots more. At first, it's just interesting to hear what popular music in these countries sounds like, but after a few listens, I was singing along (even in another language!) and had picked out my favorites. In fact, I liked the song Kakou by Dobet Gnahore so much, I bought one of her albums!

I found this chocolate milk by Cocoa Metro. When I bought it, I figured how different can it really be. Wow! This is so much better than regular convenient store chocolate milk! (I'm looking at you, Nestle Quik!)

This is dark chocolate milk. Really rich, amazingly good! And check out the ingredients. Nothing crazy, no weird chemicals, certainly no corn syrup. If you come across this stuff, buy it!

The elusive chocolate soda. I remember Faygo made a diet chocolate soda when I was a kid in the early 80's, but I haven't seen it since then. A couple years ago, I more or less gave up soda, but I made an exception for this.

Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory has stores all over Southern California, but I found this at a Sprouts grocery store near my apartment. Sprouts is a healthier, farmer's market type of store, so I was surprised to find this there.

I was hoping to find some real cocoa in the ingredients list, but alas, it wasn't meant to be. Ah well. It was an interesting flavor. Not delicious, definitely chocolaty, but strong. Maybe it was just a very artificial chocolate flavor, I don't know. It was interesting, but I wouldn't rush to get it again.

ChocoVine chocolate red wine. This is an odd combination I've seen everywhere lately, chocolate and red wine. There's a few other people out there making chocolate red wine, but this is the one I tried. I'm not a wine drinker, so I was hoping this would be pretty enjoyable, but to me, it just tasted an awful lot like Bailey's Irish Cream. My girlfriend wasn't much of a fan either. On their website, however, I came across some mixologist videos, which, I have to admit, look awesome!

Now this is good stuff! 41 Olive Dark Chocolate Balsamic Vinegar. This is delicious! When I bought it, I paired it with a chipotle olive oil, and wow, what a combination! Absolutely amazing to dip bread into. And I've cooked with it. I used the vinegar and seasoning on some fish, then pan fried it in the olive oil. Oh man. Seriously. Buy some. For real.

And finally, I found some cocoa-roasted almonds. These are great. Very crunchy, and I think there's some sugar used to bind the cocoa to the almond before roasting, because they're not bitter at all. Very chocolaty and nutty, a perfect snack, and pretty healthy too.

And that's it for this batch of other chocolate things. Have you found anything interesting made with chocolate out there? If so, please leave a comment so I can try it out! And if you've tried any of this stuff, let me know what you thought of it. I'm especially curious to know what wine drinkers think of the chocolate wine.

Recipe - Peanut Butter Cup Hot Chocolate

Everyone likes peanut butter cups, right? This hot chocolate is going to blow you away!

So how do we capture that flavor in a hot chocolate? Milk or dark chocolate? Is there a difference in flavor between the peanut butter inside a peanut butter cup and peanut butter from a jar? In a peanut butter cup, there are two separate flavors that only come together when you begin to eat it. How can we get the same two distinct flavors in a hot chocolate?

I think the trick that solved it for me was cutting down the amount of chocolate used. I originally was making a basic hot chocolate and simply adding in peanut butter. It always tasted burnt, or just way too dark and rich. To solve it, I tried it using both milk and water. I tried adding different sweeteners, but it quickly became overly sweet. Then it dawned on me that perhaps there's just too much chocolate flavor happening. I needed a better balance of the two, which meant removing some chocolate.

I guess the Reese's people figured this out ages ago, hahahaha!

For this one, I'm using Hershey's chocolate. It's easily accessible to just about everyone. We'll use their regular milk chocolate bar, but we'll balance out the sweetness by adding in a bit of cocoa powder. (Cocoa powder is bitter, as it has no sweeteners. I'll go over cocoa powder in detail in a future post.)

There's also a few great garnishes we're going to put on this one! Let's do the garnish first.

We're going to make peanut butter whipped cream!

8 oz heavy whipping cream
1 Tbs sugar
1 Tbs peanut butter
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

You also may want to pick up:

1/2 tsp chopped nuts
Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Minis








Using a mixer, whip the heavy whipping cream on high for a while, until it becomes less liquid and a bit bigger in volume. Add in the sugar and vanilla extract, and continue whipping until it begins to become fluffy. Then add in the peanut butter and whip a little bit more. 

It will be a little heavier than your average whipped topping because of the peanut butter. But taste it - WOW! Awesome, huh? 

Put this into a container with a lid and put it in the fridge while you make the hot chocolate.



Ok, here's what you need for the hot chocolate:

1 cup 2% or whole milk
3 Tbs Hershey's Milk chocolate, chopped
1 Tbs cocoa powder
1 Tbs peanut butter (preferably something natural)

Chop that chocolate up good! The smaller you chop it, the faster it melts.

Put the milk in a pot over medium heat. Bring it to just about a boil. You'll see bubbles appearing around the edges as it gets hotter. Don't let it boil, though! Just get it as close as possible. I keep mixing the milk as it warms so it heats evenly.

Once it's just about boiling, remove from heat and add in the chopped chocolate and the cocoa powder. Whisk these until the chocolate is melted and the mixture is smooth and creamy. Then add the peanut butter and continue to whisk. At this point, I usually move the pot back onto the warm burner, just to make sure it stays nice and hot.

Pour it carefully into a mug. You can either spoon on the peanut butter whipped cream, or you can put it into a baggie, snip a bottom corner off the baggie, and use that to apply it, as if you were icing a cake. The whipped cream is going to melt fast! Add on the mini peanut butter cups and some of the chopped nuts, and then brace yourself for an amazing hot chocolate!

This one is so good, it's like a dessert all by itself! I did a bunch of variations while working through the different recipes. While I was doing it, I wondered if maybe coming up with just a hot peanut butter drink recipe would be fun. What do you think?

You should be able to find Hershey's chocolates almost anywhere, from grocery stores to your nearest 7-11. If you can't find the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Mini's, you could always just get the regular size cups and chop them up into pieces.