Italian-Style Hot Chocolate
This hot chocolate has a pronounced cinnamon-and-vanilla flavor. Whenever I hear the phrase "Italian hot chocolate," I think of the bicerin I tried at a café in Turin, on the square in front of the royal palace. And although my recipe has nothing to do with bicerin, it's just as delicious and aromatic.
Cooking method
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Step 1:
Gather the ingredients. For Italian-style hot chocolate you'll need: milk, a bar of dark chocolate, sugar, potato starch, a pinch of ground cinnamon, a pinch of vanilla, and a pinch of salt.
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Step 2:
Break the chocolate into small pieces and put it in a heavy-bottomed saucepan.
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Step 3:
Pour a little milk over the chocolate and melt it over low heat, stirring constantly, until smooth.
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Step 4:
Dissolve the starch in the remaining milk.
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Step 5:
Stir thoroughly so no starch lumps remain — once they're in the finished chocolate, you won't be able to get rid of them. To be sure it's smooth, strain it through a fine sieve.
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Step 6:
Pour the starch-milk into the chocolate in a thin stream, stirring constantly. Stir quickly enough to keep lumps from forming, and keep going until the two are fully combined.
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Step 7:
Add the sugar, vanilla, ground cinnamon, and salt to the pan. Stirring constantly, cook the chocolate over low heat until it starts to thicken.
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Step 8:
Pour the finished hot chocolate into cups and serve. Enjoy!
- Hot chocolate goes back long before coffee or tea. The cacao plant was first cultivated some 3,000-4,000 years ago by the Olmecs, who lived in what is now southern Mexico. The earliest chocolate wasn't the solid bar we know today — instead, cacao beans were ground and mixed with water into a kind of paste, which became the first chocolate drink. A later legend holds that Europe discovered the taste of chocolate in the 16th century, when the conquistador Cortés brought it to Spain in 1527 along with cacao beans. He first tasted a cold, whipped, thick cacao drink seasoned with vanilla, hot pepper, and other spices at an Aztec feast. And so, little by little, chocolate won over the whole world.
Caloric content of the products possible in the composition of the dish
- Whole cow's milk - 68 kcal/100g
- Milk 3.5% fat - 64 kcal/100g
- Milk 3.2% fat - 60 kcal/100g
- Milk 1.5% fat - 47 kcal/100g
- Concentrated milk 7.5% fat - 140 kcal/100g
- Milk 2.5% fat - 54 kcal/100g
- Granulated sugar - 398 kcal/100g
- Sugar - 398 kcal/100g
- Salt - 0 kcal/100g
- Dark chocolate - 539 kcal/100g
- Vanillin - 288 kcal/100g
- Potato starch - 300 kcal/100g
- Ground cinnamon - 247 kcal/100g
