Baked Sunday Mornings: Adult Hot Chocolate

I rarely drink hot chocolate, but last month Tom and I went to Oaxaca to attend a friend's wedding and I had a cup every morning. Oaxaca is known for its chocolate -- both in beverage form and in mole sauce -- and I enjoyed starting each day by sipping a frothy hot chocolate made with water. Especially because the very attentive staff at our hotel would make one for me that I could enjoy in my room while still in my pajamas.

This week's Baked Sunday Mornings recipe is "Adult Hot Chocolate," with the "adult" descriptor coming from the fact that it includes alcohol. Just reading the recipe was enough to clog my arteries. Dark chocolate, milk chocolate, milk, heavy cream, maple syrup, and amaretto... definitely different than the hot chocolate I had enjoyed in Oaxaca, which was made from just chocolate tablets (containing chocolate, sugar, and spices) and water. (Hot chocolate is made with either water or milk in Oaxaca, and I always had the water version.)

I halved the recipe to make the single cup of hot chocolate in the photo below. It contains two and a half ounces of dark chocolate, one ounce of milk chocolate, a quarter cup of water, six tablespoons of whole milk, two tablespoons of heavy cream, and a teaspoon and a half of maple syrup. Since I'm not an alcohol drinker, I added a tablespoon of Frangelico to the milk at the beginning (instead of to the finished hot chocolate at the very end), thinking that much of the alcohol would cook off. It worked.
The hot chocolate was incredibly thick -- you might be able to pass it off as freshly-made ganache. It was not very sweet, but it was so rich that I could only drink a few sips before it became overwhelming; it seemed pretty much like drinking liquid chocolate. I'm not saying that it wasn't delicious. Just that it would probably best be enjoyed in very small doses. Or, I might even recommend making this hot chocolate Oaxaca style, with water only instead of adding both milk and cream.

Recipe: "Adult Hot Chocolate" from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.

Comments

Louise said…
Interesting observation. I may have to try making it for my husband. He often has a cup of cocoa in mid-afternoon. I think I'd try your idea of less milk and cream as I think he'd whine about that.