Basic Hot Chocolate

Since I have already touched on a few different flavored hot chocolates, I wanted to put up some easy, basic hot chocolate recipes that work for everyone's taste buds!! So...we are going to try the simplest hot chocolate recipe three different ways: White, Milk, and Dark Chocolate! Same basic recipe, just change the chocolate you use and you have three astoundingly different flavors.

Basic Hot Chocolate

makes 1-2 cups

Milk: 3 oz

Chocolate[white, milk, or dark]: 1.5 oz

Hot Water: as needed to fill glass

1. Boil milk

2. Pour over chocolate

3. Fill cup to top with hot water!

Milk and chocolate together make....

HOT CHOCOLATE

[L to R] Dark, Milk, White

The white hot chocolate is sweeter than a normal hot chocolate [just like white chocolate is much sweeter than milk or dark] It is something that I think younger children would enjoy, not too rich and just tastes like a sweet milk drink- this would be a great medium for you to flavor and turn into a very interesting hot drink! [I probably will use white chocolate to make a caramel hot cocoa- so stay tuned for that one tomorrow!]

The milk chocolate makes hot cocoa that I find to be very mild- sweet and chocolatey. It is basically the average hot cocoa that everyone is used to- so its good for a plain drink!

The dark chocolate cocoa makes for a very rich flavor and is definitely not very sweet. It is definitely for a chocolate lover. If you want a really deep, chocolate, and not overly sweet flavor, then try the dark chocolate! This would probably be a great choice if you wanted to add some liquer to your cocoa- kahlua, bailey's, etc....a sweeter liquer would make the other two chocolates overly sweet.

12 Days of Hot Chocolate

Sometimes I wonder how quirky national days come to be...for example, national hot dog day [July 23], national coffee day [September 29]. Who decides what day a singular food gets to be celebrated by everyone? Whoever he is..I want his job. It turns out that December 13 is National [hot] Cocoa Day. So, in leading up to this DELICIOUS celebration, I am going to be doing a twelve days of hot chocolates!

Day One: Peppermint Dark Chocolate

makes 3-4 cups

Dark Chocolate: 3 oz

Milk: 6 oz

Peppermint leaves: 3g [OR 1 peppermint tea bag]

Hot Water: 15-20 oz [as needed]

1. place peppermint and milk in a microwave safe container or microwave on high until begins to boil [2 minutes]

2. strain off peppermint leaves [or remove tea bag] and pour the hot milk over the chocolate

3. stir until the mixture is homogenous [if it looks like there are just big speckles of chocolate, you need to heat it and stir more]

4. Divide equally into cups [will fill about 1/3 of the way] and top with hot water - you can use hot milk at this point, but the ganache that you just made is very thick and plenty rich without any more milk being added.

5. Stir and enjoy!

steep peppermint in hot milk

Pour over chocolate

If the chocolate looks separated, you need to heat it more

Fill 1/3 of the way with ganache and then....

Top off with hot water and mix well <3

Cappuccino Bonbons

 This is the recipe that started it all- all of this. I entered a recipe contest with this recipe, and ended up winning. it was the most amazing thing to ever happen to me, and was the best experience. It made me want to make more and more chocolate, and try new recipes and see if I could start to develop a whole collection of original recipes, so here we go :]
These "bonbons" have a bottom layer of dark chocolate espresso ganache and a top layer of white chocolate vanilla ganache. I specifically didn't call them "truffles" because from what I have been taught, you can only call it a truffle if it is round, because the original chocolate truffles were covered in chocolate and then dusted with cocoa powder, resembling truffles [like the earthy/mushroom truffles that cost a ridiculous amount of money and taste like dirt]. So since these weren't round, they became bonbons....the end.

White Chocolate Vanilla Ganache
Heavy Cream - 58g
Vanilla Bean - 2 ea
Coffee (whole beans) - 5g
Butter - 6g
White Chocolate (melted, tempered) - 158g
Method:
Bring cream, vanilla, and coffee beans to a boil, cover and steep for 5 minutes. Strain out the vanilla and coffee. Re-weigh the remaining cream, add more if there is not enough left.
Boil cream. Allow to cool to 105 F.
Pour over melted, tempered chocolate, mix slowly until homogonous.
Stir in softened butter.
Spread ganache onto a deep dish paper plate [or into an 8" cake pan that is lined with parchment paper]

Dark Chocolate Espresso Ganache
Heavy Cream - 58g
Coffee(coarsely ground) - 30g
Butter - 10g
Dark Chocolate (melted, tempered) - 135g
Method:
Bring cream and coffee to a boil, cover and steep for 5 minutes. Strain out the coffee grinds, and replace any evaporated cream with milk.
Boil cream. Allow to cool to 105 F.
Pour over melted tempered chocolate, mix slowly until homogenous.
Stir in softened butter.
Spread ganache on top of set white chocolate ganache.

Finishing:
Temper Dark Chocolate.
Spread a think, even layer over top of the Dark Chocolate Espresso Ganache.
Once set, flip the slab of ganache so the white chocolate is on top. Cut the ganache into  1/2" squares.
Using a dipping fork, dip the ganache centers in tempered Dark Chocolate. Once set, pipe diagonal stripes of tempered  White Chocolate across the chocolates.

bring cream to full boil

melted tempered chocolate and butter, read to stir in

finished, cappuccino bon bons :]

looking forward to working on some halloween [i.e. pumpkin] confections!