#hot-chocolate

#hot-chocolate

If you've experimented with flavorful ingredients to infuse into honey, you have sampled the punchy delight of hot honey. Honey made with spice - chilies, flakes, or even hot sauce - offers an infusion that straddles the line between heat and sweet. It's the kind of ingredient that can transform everyday recipes, both food and beverage. Once hot honey is stored in your kitchen, it couldn't be easier to spoon into drinks or drizzle on top of mugs for a transformative experience.

And, as a recent survey by European ferry operator DFDS found, hot chocolate is the winter drink 64 percent of British people look forward to most when traveling, ahead of mulled wine at No. 2 by a mile at 31 percent. In fact, nearly nine in 10 Brits (87 percent) said they make a point of trying the local hot chocolate when visiting a new city.

One of my absolute favorite winter drinks is the après-ski classic verte chaud - also known as hot chocolate with a shot of emerald Green Chartreuse. This 300-year-old monastic liqueur is flavored with over 130 different botanicals, making it fabulously complex, with reviving notes of anise, mint, ginger, aromatic woods, pepper, tobacco, and lemon zest. It brings real lift to hot chocolate or dishes with earthy cocoa and creamy notes.

Sure, the extravagant chocolate shavings, toasted marshmallows, and candy pieces found in souped-up hot chocolate does make for a pretty good cup of cocoa, but the drink is best when you elevate the base ingredients. Using the right kind of cocoa powder, opting for milk over water - and the type of milk you choose - can produce a stellar outcome. For your next batch of hot chocolate, use condensed milk for the richest results.

If that sounds like luscious interplay (as we had hoped), don't be deceived. Quoth our taste-tester, "the hot chocolate was watery rather than rich and milky, and it left an odd, almost alcoholic aftertaste that may have been the result of artificial syrup." As for that caramel drizzle, it "might as well have been forgotten since we couldn't detect any caramel notes in the drink at all."

Why you'll love this recipe! Indulgent - Forget everything you know about store-bought hot chocolate packets. My easy homemade hot chocolate is made with melted dark chocolate, cocoa powder, milk, and vanilla to make it irresistibly luxurious. Adult-friendly - A little bourbon in each sip brings the après ski vibes to any occasion. Need a kid-friendly drink? Just skip the booze! So simple - Just one pot, a handful of ingredients, and about 10 minutes on the stove.

The etymology of chocolate is via Spanish via Nahuatl - xocólatl combines xococ for sour, atl for water, owing to the bitterness of its earliest uses for what was once an elegant drink in the royal courts of ancient Mexico. Its export to Europe and the passing of centuries made "hot chocolate" a milk-derived sweet drink, warmed, though in Indigenous communities in Mexico, it's still