A Better Hot Chocolate

The Pie found this recipe from Jamie Oliver and he thought it was worth a try. I think it will also make a great wintry gift.

The interesting thing about the original recipe is it involves Horlick’s, a malted beverage very popular at the beginning of the 20th century and through the 1950s. Horlick’s is hard to find in Canada, but a close equivalent is Ovaltine.

Ovaltine on its own is definitely an acquired taste (I personally find it revolting), but it will add a richness to the hot chocolate that improves everything. You will need 2 tablespoons Ovaltine or Horlick’s.

You will also need 100g chocolate (pretty much a large-sized chocolate bar), your choice.

I made some with dark chocolate, but the Pie and I both prefer it with milk chocolate, seeing as there’s also a decent amount of unsweetened cocoa powder in this, 4 tablespoons cocoa powder, in fact. Make sure you choose a cocoa that you like – don’t go cheap on this!

You will also need 2 tablespoons cornstarch (corn flour in the UK) to make this a nice thick beverage.

Here is 3 tablespoons icing (confectioner’s) sugar. You can adjust this according to your taste.

This is also a pinch or two of sea salt and a pinch of ground cinnamon, which, again, you can adjust to what suits you.

To put it all together, take your chocolate and pop it in your food processor. The original recipe calls for you to finely grate the chocolate but who wants to sit there and grate that much chocolate? Not me, and I made six batches of this.

So I just pulsed it in the food processor until it formed little crumbs.

Then you simply add in the rest of the ingredients.

Pulse it until the colour is uniform, kind of a grayish brown. The crumbs of chocolate will mix in and get smaller while you do this, too.

To prepare the hot chocolate for two people, dump about 3 heaping tablespoons of the mix into a small saucepan.

Dribble in about 1/4 cup milk.

Whisk that until you get a nice paste. This will prevent the finished hot chocolate from being lumpy.

Then pour in another 1 1/4 cup milk.

Stir that until smooth and start heating the milk until it’s a temperature you like.

Serve hot!

To give the chocolate as gifts, you can pack the mix into these cute jars.

Or you can put it in a wee bag.

And then pop it in a customized mug.

Or whatever floats your boat!