Are you ready for an over the top morning mug? This is it!
Shhh, my birthday is this week and I may have started celebrating early with this drinking chocolate.
This is a special occasion drinking chocolate. Party because it needs some extras, but also because it is far more sugary and sweet than my usual go-to drinking chocolate.
What you will need:
- One 60-70 gram chocolate bar
- 3/4 cup cream, I used a 10% cows’ milk cream
- Ice cream of your choice (I made a brown sugar cinnamon ice cream with dairy products)
- A large mug
- Sauce pan
- Spoon/Spatula/Whisk/Blender/Handheld Frother
- Whipping cream (make it yourself or buy already made)
- Spice grater
First, use your small spice grater to grate some of the chocolate bar, about a teaspoon. Then chop the rest of the chocolate bar into smaller pieces and set them aside. I like them to be about the size of a dime at most.
Second, whip the whipping cream and put it aside in the fridge so it is ready when you need it. You are welcome to add sugar and vanilla if that is your preference, but I chose not to as this is already pretty sweet.
Third, warm up the cream on the stove top, stirring as it warms to keep the bottom from burning. Once it has come to just below a boil, take it off the stove and set aside. You are wanting a thick and creamy, European style drinking chocolate here. I used one dark milk 60% chocolate bar for this to get a consistent flavour.
Here you can add the chocolate into the pot now on the stove and whisk it if you like until it is all melted. You need to keep it over a low heat as you do this. I used the saucepan and whisk method and used a mini hand frother for the final mix up. You don’t have to do this step, I just find it helps to make it a bit more airy.
Alternatively, you can add the chocolate and the hot cream (carefully) to a blender and blend. This adds much more air to the drink and makes it fuller, frothier, and fluffier.
Once your drink has been mixed or blended, set aside briefly and grab your ice cream and whipping cream from the fridge and freezer.
Scoop one scoop of ice cream into your mug/bowl, or two small ones as I did here, pour chocolate drink over top, add whipping cream and top with chocolate shavings.
A truly celebratory chocolate drink to enjoy for special occasions.
I really enjoyed this as a weekend treat to start my birthday week, it was extra sweet and decadent, and felt like I was truly taking some time to celebrate with chocolate. I really debated making a chocolate ice cream to go with this, but ended up thinking that may have been too chocolatey for my tastes.
If you are making it for kids, top it with coloured sprinkles instead of chocolate shavings and watch their faces light up.
I used a brown sugar cinnamon ice cream I made myself this weekend, but this is lovely with so many kinds of ice cream. Vanilla, chocolate, raspberry, mint, whatever you want and like to put with chocolate would work. You may want to watch out for ice cream with large pieces of things in it, like nuts or candy as those will make for a lumpy hot chocolate.
I am lucky enough to have an ice cream maker, so I made ice cream the day before and froze it overnight to be sure it was extra hard and frozen when making this fancy hot chocolate. Above are a few of the photos I took.
Check out these other blogs about Hot Chocolate: