Haute Chocolate!
Oh geeze, a pun! A French pun, nonetheless. I hope Vosges doesn’t sue me. Oh well. (If you’re confused as to who or what Vosges is, it’s a chocolate company responsible for terrible slights against humanity such as this). Anywho, after eating dinner at a friend’s house and having some rich chocolate Ovaltine, I found myself contemplating my loathing for that delicious yuletide drink, hot chocolate. Then I became addicted to the hot chocolate at Starbucks (which I somehow ended up with one day after I asked the woman working there what had caffeine in it but wasn’t coffee. I was too tired to argue.). I realized that I liked the hot chocolate from Starbucks because a.) it is made with milk instead of water gross (I ask for whole milk. They judge me.), and b.) it’s got that lovely kind of bitter aftertaste of non-milk chocolate that I love.
Now, I’m gonna drop a bomb here. I do not like chocolate. I don’t like chocolate cake, with or without chocolate frosting. I hate milk chocolate, unless it surrounds a nut of some sort. I do not wish for chocolate during my lady times, and I have never thought of adorning my life with shirts or bumper stickers like this or this. What. The. Hell. If a dude ever gave me chocolate for Valentine’s day, I would dump him. The only thing I like about chocolate is that little bittersweet aftertaste like in homemade brownie batter (which I love) and the hot chocolate at Starbucks. So, I figured it couldn’t be that hard to engineer something delicious and awesome, and not powdered and mixed with water.
Yup, that’s it. In a lovely Christmas glass. unfortunately, I miscalculated that whole displacement thing, so when I put the whipped cream on it, it kind of went everywhere. But it’s kinda hot in that messy Bon Appetit down-to-earth sorta way. Maybe. Anywho, so first I contemplated a liquid vehicle for my delicious ski lodge drink. I figured, hey, what’s better than whole milk? Half and half! Yaaay. So, yeah, I’m a glutton. But I figure, you’re only gonna have this like, once a year, so you might as well go all out with the lovely rich flavor of half-milk/half-cream. Mmmm.
So, what I did was take a pint/16 0z./2cups/a pound/half a quart/2 mugs full of half and half and throw it in a pot with 2 sticks of cinnamon and a teensy tiny pinch of cayenne pepper. Cayenne pepper you say? That’s spicy! What’s going on here? Well, yeah, you know, it’s what the Aztecs did. Or something. And, ya know, I think people should do more things the Aztecs did. Like drink from the hollowed-out heads of their enemies. But mostly the cayenne pepper in the chocolate. Why does it work? I dunno, but it’s really nice to have that latent tingling to balance out the sweetness of the chocolate.
So anywho, throw that on some medium heat to kinda steep for about 10 minutes, but don’t turn it up too high, because milk burns, and that crap’s no good in the hot chocolate. I usually make some whipped cream during this step, but, ya know, I like to do things the hard way so that’s a step you can skip. So, once the milk is nice and steamy, whisk in the chocolat. I use semi-sweet, but you can use whatever kinda chocolate you like, except not milk chocolate, obviously. I buy the big Ghirardelli baking bars and break those up. For this amount, I use half a 4 oz. bar of chocolate. So, whisk that in and add a capful of vanilla extract. Then just throw it in 2 mugs with one cinnamon stick in each mug. The last bit is a little surprise thing to throw in a little pinch of Sanka. It’s dehydrated instant decaf coffee, and the bitterness and richness really makes the richness of the chocolate stick out, and it just makes it that much rounder and fuller. Then just throw some whipped cream on top (ya know, if you feel like it), and you’ve got delicious drink for the holiday season. Almost as delicious as the buckets of alcohol you’ll be drinking with your family (or because of, depending on the family). Plus by the time you get to the bottom, it’s so delicious and spicy because of the cinnamon stick! Oh my god, I actually like hot chocolate now.
