Review - Bottega Louie Fine Cocoa

One of my favorite things about living in Los Angeles is the diversity and the quality of the restaurants here. While an Italian restaurant isn't actually all that diverse, Bottega Louie is definitely one of my favorites.

The restaurant is very sparsely decorated, with bare white walls and vaulted ceilings. It feels very classy, although once you're seated and enjoying your meal it begins to feel very warm and comfortable. On the wall leading back to the kitchen there's a wonderful pizza oven, the fire inside giving off a warm glow to go along with the amazing aromas.

However, before you get to your table, when you first walk in the door, you are greeted by their bakery and gift shop. Sweets and pastries fill their display windows, along with an unbelievably colorful assortment of macarons. And tucked in there on the shelves among the little boxes of goodies and treats you'll find their gourmet hot chocolate mix and their marshmallows.

I've picked up this hot chocolate mix a few times now, as it's a great one. The package is wonderful and original, as well, and the vivid pink ties into the entire theme of Bottega Louie.





A couple of the ingredients were new to me. The first two are Noel chocolate and Jivara chocolate, and then it's rounded out with sugar, dry milk, Valrhona cocoa powder, and salt.

Doing a little research online shows me that Noel chocolate, or Cacao Noel, is a French brand. "Carefully grown and selected Equatorial beans are fermented and roasted at their factory on the Ivory Coast. A century-old manufacturer completes the selection blending in France. The result is a sophisticated chocolate line with an intensely rich, complex flavor." So there ya go, equatorial beans, roasted on the Ivory Coast, and turned in to chocolate in France.

The Jivara chocolate is actually a variety of Valrhona chocolate. I actually really like that Bottega Louie were so specific on their ingredients list, actually naming the exact brand and variety of chocolates they've used.

I usually make this mix as instructed on the package, which is 1 cup water and 6 tbsp cocoa mix. I've also enjoyed it using milk instead, and while it's a milder drink (typical when using milk instead of water), it's still absolutely delicious.

Made as instructed, it's rich and smooth, and very strong for a powder mix, with a very fudgey flavor. I'd go so far as to rate this sup there as one of the best powder mixes I've had. I really enjoy that rich fudge flavor, almost like you're drinking a warm brownie, so when I find mixes that have that flavor, I really embrace them.



Topped with those amazing, fluffy marshmallows, you can't wrong. Serve more marshmallows on the side, and include those chocolate ones for a super chocolate overdose!

To my surprise, you cannot order their cocoa or marshmallows online. That's a bummer! If you're in Los Angeles, however, it'worth a stop to pick some up, and heck, you could even enjoy dinner while you're there. You can visit their Twitter HERE. Be sure and tell them Melting Mug sent you! ;)

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 - Ginger Elizabeth Hot Chocolate

I'll be honest with you - I can't remember how I found out about Ginger Elizabeth Chocolates. They must have turned up in something I was reading online, or perhaps looking over a map of chocolate places here in California. However it happened, I'm glad I found them.

Ginger Elizabeth Chocolates was started by Ginger Elizabeth Hahn in 2005 to be a responsible, sustainable chocolate company. They're located in Sacramento, where in 2008 they opened a small storefront. From pictures on their Facebook page, it seems the good people of Sacramento are perfectly aware of what a treasure they have there, as they line up down the block to get into the place!

After trying their amazing hot chocolate, I sent a message to them asking what details they could give me about how it's made. Wow! Traci, the manager there, gave me every bit of information I could have asked for! Unbelievably helpful!

When I ordered the hot chocolate tin from their online shop, I also bought a stick of their marshmallows. What a great way to package marshmallows! They form it in a plastic roll, and simply leave it there for the customer to cut into whatever size they choose.

Back to the chocolate! Traci informed me that they are not bean-to-bar chocolate makers, but that they source their chocolate from Valrhona in France, Felchlin in Switzerland, and Etienne Guittard here in the US. They are fondeurs, meaning they melt the sourced chocolate into their own custom varieties and flavors. Ginger herself creates those blends and flavors. The hot chocolate we're reviewing here is a 58% blend.

Online, they only have the Classic variety of hot chocolate available. In their boutique, they have a couple other varieties, Oaxacan and European. Go try them if you're near Sacramento! The Oaxacan also uses a 58% chocolate, but the European uses a 72%. Man, I sure wish I lived close enough to try them all out!

They have some recipes posted on their website, one for European hot chocolate and one for a Maya Coconut hot chocolate. As the European recipe on their site uses their Classic hot chocolate as the main ingredient, I'm guessing perhaps the one served in the boutique is a bit stronger at 72%.

The directions are straightforward, and I'm using milk rather than water. Like most amazing hot chocolates, the mix of real chocolate clumped together into perfect little morsels that dissolved quickly in the heated milk.

Someday I hope computers can transmit smells, because that picture above is worthy of the technology.

The finished drink is wonderful and rich, and that 58% is really obvious. Rather than a deep, bitter flavor, the hot chocolate tastes much more like a sweet milk chocolate. In fact, that's what got me writing to them in the first place. It didn't taste like the dark chocolates I was used to, so I was curious about the percentages they use. If you're not yet enjoying the dark chocolates, but want something much better than a typical powder mix hot cocoa, then this is your cup of chocolate! 

Click some of those links and order some, and be sure and tell them where you heard about them! And thank you, Traci at Ginger Elizabeth Chocolates. If only other hot chocolate makers were as responsive and informative as you guys are!

Review - Diane Krön Drinking Chocolate

Wandering in Beverly Hills with a friend of mine, we stumbled across a tiny chocolate shop tucked away in the corner of a retail building on Santa Monica Blvd. I had never heard of them before. The sign was a little mysterious - "K Chocolatier".

I have since learned that K Chocolatier is owned by Diane Krön, who, over the years, has had clients such as Jackie Kennedy, Estee Lauder, Gregory Peck and Andy Warhol, to name a few. While in the store, we sampled some truffles they had at the counter, which were great. Browsing the shelves, I picked up a bag of their drinking chocolate.

I tried to do a little research and learn where their chocolate comes from - if it comes from a supplier, such as Varlhona, or if they create chocolate bean-to-bar. I couldn't find any information on this, and as of this writing, they haven't responded to my email inquiry. But I did learn that one of the things they do try to do is use less sugar than most commercial chocolatiers. That's always good news!

It came in a simple bag with an instruction card stapled to the top of it.

The mix itself is definitely more of a crumbled, ground chocolate rather than a powder. It clumps together and smells wonderful. Don't worry about the clumps, they melt easily and quickly.

I made mine with 2% milk, and it was magnificent. Creamy and good, a delicious dark chocolate flavor, not overly fruity like some of the expensive artisan chocolates. Just solid, clean dark chocolate flavor. They have a shop in Malibu, as well, and if you happen to be near either store, I'd advise picking some up. I know I'll be grabbing some more!

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.

Recipe - Pumpkin Spice Hot Chocolate

It's mid-October, and that makes it officially Fall. This is when the general population begins to really take notice of hot chocolate. So, let's step up the game a bit and make a perfect cup o' cocoa for Halloween and Thanksgiving: some pumpkin spice hot chocolate!

We're using all real ingredients, and we're going to make some amazing, perfect whipped cream again, but this time, instead of whipping it with electric beaters, I've got a new kitchen toy - a refillable whipped cream dispenser. If you don't have one, of course you can always do it with beaters or a whisk. But if you've got a little extra money and you make whipped cream a lot, it's worth it!

Let's make the whipped cream first, so it can chill while we make the hot chocolate.

Let's grab the usual ingredients for some whipped cream:

1 pint heavy whipping cream
2 tbsp powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

In the photo, you can see the dispenser. You also have to buy little carbon dioxide canisters with it. That's what pressurizes it once you pour the cream into the canister.






First we have to make sure the ingredients are mixed thoroughly before filling the canister, so pour the cream, sugar, and vanilla into a bowl and whisk it together for a few minutes, until it looks like the sugar is mostly dissolved.

Pour it into the dispenser and screw on the lid. Now we have to pressurize it. Be sure to follow the instructions that came with your dispenser carefully. The first time we made a batch here, it didn't pressurize correctly and always came sputtering out every time we tried to use it.

On the dispenser I have, the little CO2 can goes into a plastic holder, and then that holder is screwed into the lid of the dispenser. As you're tightening it, you can hear the carbon dioxide spray into the dispenser.













That's it! Whipped cream is done! Shake it up lightly and give it a test, holding it upside while you spray. I do it over the sink, because usually that first bit is still liquid. After a spray or two, you should have perfect whipped cream!

Put that in the fridge so it stays nice and cool. Next we're going to gather up the ingredients for this amazing pumpkin spice hot chocolate.

Ingredients:

1 3/4 cups milk (2% or whole)
2 tbsp dark chocolate
1 tsp powdered sugar
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1 tsp ground vanilla (or vanilla extract)
2 tbsp pumpkin puree











Real pumpkin puree, no fake pumpkin flavor here! And as always, the chocolate you choose will have a huge effect on the flavor. Anything dark (over 60%) should be okay, but when it's close to done, feel free to taste it and add more sugar if you'd like.

I'm using ground vanilla rather than vanilla extract in mine. I like this flavor a little better; it feels a little more pure to me because it's not extracted with alcohol. But vanilla extract works just fine, too, so use what you have.

I'm using a really good chocolate, Varlhona Caraibe 66%. Varlhona makes an amazing variety of chocolates, and many bakers and confectioners use their chocolate in their own candy creations. You can get Varlhona bars at most Trader Joe's, but for the baking portions, look for a restaurant supply store near your house. In Culver City here in Los Angeles, there's a great store called Surfas. That's where I got mine.

It comes in these great little bean sized bits that are perfect for measuring out for baking. However, for easier melting, I prefer to chop up the chocolate even smaller, and that calls for another kitchen toy, my little Oxo Chopper.

This gadget makes chopping almost anything really quick and easy! It's got a whole line of blades, and they rotate a few degrees every time they come down. Really slick! Kind of a pain to clean, though.

You should be heating the milk while chopping the chocolate. Once the milk is just about boiling, go ahead and add in the chocolate, whisking it around so it can start melting. Once it's melted, add in the rest of these amazing ingredients. Take the time to smell it! It's wonderful!

Pour it into a large mug, then carefully spray some of that awesome whipped cream on top. There's probably no better mug of hot chocolate for Fall than this one. Sit back and relax, put on a scary movie or a football game, and enjoy it.