Hot Chocolate

At a recent family gathering, we ended up discussing the difference between hot chocolate and hot cocoa. As suspected, the difference is that hot chocolate uses actual chocolate and hot cocoa uses cocoa powder. Since this discussion I've been wanting to try out hot chocolate, it sounded like it would be a lot nicer than hot cocoa.

Now that I've been at home for the whole of March due to the coronavirus outbreak, I'm trying not to spend my days eating, but we had some milk on its last legs, so I decided to use it up in what turned out to be a massively delightful way. I used this recipe as basis, but made a few changes due to not having all the right ingredients. Possibly I should have read through the whole article, but I think my hot chocolate turned out very nice anyway.

Ingredients
Makes 2 portions

70 g dark chocolate
30 g caramel chocolate
5 dl semi-skimmed milk

Method

1. If the chocolate is in a large block, chop it up into small pieces.
2. Heat up 2 dl of the milk in a saucepan until it starts steaming, then remove from the heat and add the chocolate.
3. Stir until the chocolate has melted fully and is well mixed with the milk. Place the saucepan back on the hob and add the remaining milk and heat up while stirring, but make sure it doesn't boil.
4. Pour into two mugs and drink straight away.

Caramel chocolate is basically white chocolate with caramel in it. It's colour is beige, a bit like latte and it is quite sweet, so worked really well in the above recipe. The dark chocolate I use contains 54.5% cocoa mass and is the one I use when I make pralines etc. It's not too sweet, but also not too bitter.

I also used my trusty Aerolatte frother to foam up the hot chocolate, which helps keep the drink hot I think. It would probably be very nice with fresh marshmallows, I'll need to try and make some for next time. I also might try adding a little cinnamon and vanilla.