Hot chocolate must always be made from bars of chocolate, never from powder. then it really becomes a noble product.
~~Michel Cluizel, French chocolate maker
It only follows then that the drinking chocolate we make should be made in the same spirit we craft our bars. That is, exactly however we dream them up to be. Nobody’s chocolate gave me permission or inspired my creation of my wildly popular bar Meteor Shower: I’d never seen black sesame in milk chocolate, but I had seen a blog recipe for a milk chocolate ice cream with black sesame brittle. It was that notion, that chocolate “worked” with black sesame, that insired me.
My go-to for chocolate ideas is often ice cream for inspiration. You can read more on that here:
But my all-time go-to for drinking chocolate, despite having never used a recipe from it, is Michael Turback’s book, Hot Chocolate. Michael asked chefs and chocolatiers to contribute recipes (there’s the original Scharffen Berger Hot Chocolate, one from Chocolat Bonnat, and Christopher Elbow, amongst others.
A few inspiring entries:
lavender-pistachio hot chocolate
bay leaf-infused hot chocolate
ginger caramel hot chocolate
Key lime pie hot chocolate
hot butterscoth with white chocolate
sake-wasabi hot chocolate
But my favorite, hands down, is the Double Chocolate Hot Chocolate, by then-executive pastry chef, Emily Luchetti (coincidentally an original Map Chocolate bean to bar student).
If you can get your hands on a copy, grab it.
ICYMI, yesterday’s post offered drinking chocolate starting point recipes, and other insights into crafting it
But for today, here’s a PDF of flavor-added recipes. Really, the sky is the limit. If you craft plant-based white chocolate, use that as a leaping-off point. Same for toasted milk white chocolate. Two flavors can be shredded and added to the same product package: if you dream it, my guess is, someone out there will be thrilled to drink it.
The guiding principles of making bars are the same: we can’t dump bourbon into a batch and think it won’t seize. Liquid can be added, but only with seed tempering, and I haven’t risked it for drinking chocolate due to the melt factor (I wouldn’t want my customers to end up with a weird lumpy mess). However, just as with inclusioncrafting, if there is flavor we are keen to add, we just have to figure it out. If the idea of a bourbon hot chocolate seems grand, soak the nibs. Source bourbon sugar. Figure oy “how” and make it unique to you. I can guarantee if it takes time (and ends up worth your time), very few makers will attempt to copy it (lol, they’ll ask me and I’ll say what I just wrote above :)
See the guide below for more ideas.
Thanks to all who’ve responded to the survey in yesterday’s post! I’ll leave it open for responses through Friday, and then will through everyone’s names in a jar and randomly choose the winner of the paid year or hour-long one on one mentoring.
Happy making,
Mackenzie