Here’s a recipe that is close to my favorite with a spiciness of 3 and sweetness of 3:
It is a slight variation of the Chili Hot Chocolate recipe here using less sugar I think.
1 cup milk, 2% fat
45 grams 99% Cacao Scharffenberger Chocolate
20 grams or 1/16 cup confectioners sugar (white granulated, not powdered)
1/4 teaspoon and 1/16 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
I originally planned to use as much as 3/16 cup of sugar but i kept adding and mixing until the sweetness was right and I had only used about 1/16 cup.
Directions:
Heat milk gently, at no point going higher than 140 degrees fahrenheit.
Add chocolate. wait until partly melted and then periodically mix for 1 second with a hand blender.
Add cinnamon and chili powder and mix.
Add sugar to taste.
Serve at 130.
The use of hand blender has side effect of frothing the milk which makes it have a richer taste, similar to steaming of the milk.
I was somewhat surprised at the amount of chocolate required to flavor 1 cup of milk. 1.6 ounces (45g) of chocolate looks like a lot, but I suppose that is why the flavor is so rich.
Preparation: 8 ounces 2% milk, one scoop powder, heated to 140 degrees,
residual heat to 175 degrees.
Sweetness: 5
spiciness: 1
Ingredients: Pure Hawaiian cane sugar, Premium African Forestero cocoa, ground chocolate, spices, salt
Tasting notes:
This was too sweet for me and not
enough spice. If you look at the ingredients, the spices are not named
specifically, so they aren’t that significant part of the mix. Overall I think
my favorite is Chuao spicy maya followed by Winter Sipper’s. I tried mixing
1/3 Dagoba (too spicy) with 2/3 Mocafe (too sweet) and the result is sweet and
spicy — almost as good as Chuao, but not as rich tasting. On sweetness it ranks 3 for me and spiciness ranks 3. So now at least, I
can use the last two chocolate mixes to produce something drinkable for me and
not give up on them entirely.
Back in August, when I was in Stuttgart, Germany, I stopped by the Mercedes Benz museum. They had a demonstration of a restored one cylinder four stroke gasoline engine “car” — the Benz Patent Motorwagen. It was the first one built in 1886.
We’ve come a long way since then, but I can imagine how exciting it was to drive one of these back then.
