Hot chocolate is the hug you need this winter

Chocolate is fundamental. Hot chocolate when you’re cold is like getting a hug when you really need one. There are many ways of making hot chocolate, and each has its appeal. Thick, thin, creamy, spicy, super-chocolatey, or luxurious with cream and milk — there is a type that suits the needs of the moment and you.

Growing up drinking Swiss Miss as many of us did, we often expect ready-made mixes to be bland and overly sweet, but those days are gone. Most bean-to-bar chocolate companies now make bespoke mixes that combine cocoa powders of various strengths and provenances. Few add powdered milk because it is assumed we’ll be making the hot beverage with milk and even a touch of cream.

We are spoiled for choice for the ultimate cocoa powder experience, from the Parisian Angelina Cafe hot chocolate mix and San Francisco’s Dandelion chocolate mixes to so many local versions. Valerie makes a great one that I love added to coffee for an afternoon cup of mocha. Chocovivo has several choices of drinking chocolate made from chocolate in disc form, but if you go there, you can browse an entire menu of hot chocolate choices and sip away. La Monarca sells both Mexican hot chocolate mixes and a champurrado mix. MIlla is known for her fantastic bon bons, so expect a high-quality drinking chocolate experience.

Or you can make your own mix to keep on the shelf like this excellent version from Melissa Clark, or the recipes from Gourmandise’s Clemence De Lutz down below. You can customize the amount and type of cocoa powder you use from the darkest dutched cocoa powder to lighter ones, as well as the amount and type of sugars.

Whatever your taste and texture preferences, there is a hot chocolate for you, from the classic American version made with a powdered mix and topped with marshmallows, to the choices below.

Mexican hot chocolate made from tablillas of stone-ground chocolate and spices is served with foam atop. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

Mexican drinking chocolate

This is made with stone-ground bittersweet chocolate and cinnamon with just a hint of sugar. You can buy the ready-made mixture pressed into tablets or tablillas that you add to hot milk. Mexican chocolate has a customary grainy texture. Embrace it.

You can customize your cup by adding a bit of your favorite ground chile and a bit of piloncillo, or Mexican brown sugar, for additional sweetness.

Made with water or a combination of water and milk, it’s a lighter drink that’s perfect for a mid-afternoon pick-me-up. Those tablets are also great in coffee. Hello mocha! 

The beverage needs to be finished off by making it foamy before drinking. That’s what the wooden tool known as a molinillo is for. Or you can use one of those little milk frothers.

Champurrado

This is a warming beverage that marries atole, the pre-Colombian beverage of masa flour and spices, with Mexican chocolate. You can make it with water, milk, or a mixture. It’s thick. And though many versions we see on the streets of LA are very lightly chocolatey, you can make it as deep with flavor as you like.

Spanish-style hot chocolate is traditionally accompanied with churros. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

Spanish-style hot chocolate

This is nearly a pudding due to the addition of cornstarch to the whole milk and chocolate. You can make it so you can actually drink it, or you can eat it with a spoon. And if you want the whole experience, make churros for dunking.

Or you could just work your way through the library of hot chocolate recipes from Binging with Babish, which has basic, French, Viennese, and Italian methods. The recipes vary in type and amount of chocolate used, as well as differing sugars, and in the case of the Viennese variation, the addition of egg yolks.

And Gourmandise’s Clemence De Lutz, a friend of Good Food, has a great video on Instagram showing the French way, beginning with a deep dark ganache.