French Hot Chocolate

Today we are making hot chocolate from scratch with vanilla and cinnamon, this is the hot chocolate that you be making even on summer days. So the ingredients you need are full cream milk, organic dark chocolate with 70% cocoa content fresh cinnamon bark that’s gonna give the nice little flavor a pinch of sugar some vanilla essence and some 100% cocoa powder to give it some texture. To finish, you will add a little bit of salt just to enhance that kind of sweet and savory balance.

Start by heating milk over medium-high heat, you will also add cinnamon barks and with this add vanilla extract and whisk using a whisk. Wait until the milk boils and let it simmer and let it simmer for around 10 minutes and the reason we are doing this is to give time for the cinnamon to diffuse its flavor to the milk and your milk is going to reduce a little bit and give it a little bit more body.

After 10 minutes have passed the first thing you are going to do like always is taste your preparation. You should feel the cinnamon that’s been cooked enough, put the heat off and discard your cinnamon barks and continue with your preparation. And at this stage add in your cocoa powder do not put too much and stir it up to start the base of the chocolate.

Sieve the milk in another container and wash your pan and then put your pan back to continue with everything. Add the sifted mixture to the pan it should look much cleaner and much better at this point. Then add into the mixture a pinch of sugar to add a little bit of sweetness but not too much and the secret ingredient which is actually the salt because that also enhances the sugary taste. From here, add in all your chocolate and stir using a wire whisk and the chocolate melts very first so you don’t have to stir for so long, you want the mixture to be nice and sweet and silky.

It is up to you to leave the heat on or off if you leave it on you will have a much thicker consistency but if you like it then put the heat off and serve it right away. Now for the serving, take your pan and pour the mixture into the bowl and you can add more sugar if you want and take the brioche and dip it in and enjoy with the hot chocolate.