Can't We Just Eat the Drinking Chocolate?

I love drinking hot chocolate. I make my own, sometimes by mixing organic cocoa powder, milk, real vanilla and organic sweetener, and sometimes I make it directly from a quality chocolate bar.  On occasion, I grind cacao nibs and make a very 'nibby' hot chocolate. And no matter how I make it, there is nothing as nice as a warm, chocolaty beverage on a cold Canadian winter day.

But truthfully, I prefer to eat my chocolate, rather than drink it.  So when I happily purchased Toronto-based ChocoSol's 'Oaxacan Cinnamon Drinking Chocolate' in a shop close to home, I immediately opened the packaged and ate some, before bothering to make a hot beverage out of it.

I actually had to buy a second package in order to test out the hot drinking chocolate recipe on the back, because the crunchy chocolate was just so delicious. Sure it is crunchy and unrefined, not anything like the smooth chocolate that we are used to. But the crumbly texture melts away in your mouth with a nice sweet taste with a lovely heavy cinnamon flavour. It really is quite bright, not overly acidic and delicious.

And this wasn't just the crazy opinion of a cocoa-bean fanatic like myself...my family members also ate the drinking chocolate and liked it. A lot. Which is why I had to buy a new package. So it was only after the second purchase that I tested out the recipe for drinking chocolate.


The instructions tell us to blend two wedges of the chocolate with 200 ml of water (less than 1 cup). This makes a small cup of hot drinking chocolate with a rich colour and frothy top. But with a water base, the resulting beverage has a slightly watery taste, and all the cinnamon spice and acidity from the cacao bean come forward. This is not bad, and it is considered traditional for drinking chocolate, but in my opinion, a better way to enjoy it is to mix it with the same amount of whole milk (3%) for a creamy and delicious hot chocolate experience. The spice was still apparent, but milder, offering a more enjoyable mild heat to the drink.

If you cannot have dairy milk, try coconut milk for a creamy hot chocolate. I tried it with canned coconut milk, and it was quite good (you might just need to blend the contents of the can before using it).

Keep in mind that making this kind of drinking chocolate is easier with a blender, a Magic Bullet, a smoothie maker, immersion blender, or the Ninja smoothie attachment like I have. You can try to melt the chocolate in a cup of hot milk or water and whisk it, but you will not have as much froth and it will take longer.

ChocoSol's 'Eating' Chocolate:

If you prefer to eat chocolate that is a little more refined, and if you really love the flavour of real vanilla bean, rather than cinnamon, the 'Sinfully Raw Vanilla' chocolate bar by ChocoSol is quite tasty. There is a slight grit in the 'stone-ground chocolate' way - ChocoSol only grinds it for 6 hours to preserve the nutrients - but certainly less grit than the drinking chocolate. Besides, the grit is what makes it interesting because it is a change from the norm.

The packaging does not specify, but ChocSol told me that the Sinfully Raw bar has 82% cacao solids. However, it does not have a bitter taste, and the vanilla also gives it a nice, sweet taste, seeming more like a 70-something-percent dark chocolate.

Here are the package details from the chocolate that I tasted and told you about today:

OAXACAN CINNAMON Drinking Chocolate
2 discs of about 100 grams each
ChocoSol Traders (Toronto, Canada)
www.chocosoltraders.com
Ingredients: Whole roasted cacao, raw cane sugar, amaranth flour, cinnamon bark.

SINFULLY RAW VANILLA
ChocoSol Traders (Toronto, Canada)
www.chocosoltraders.com
Ingredients: Cacao, raw sugar, cacao butter, vanilla pods, raw cacao nibs.