Smokin’ Hot Chocolate!!

Wow!

I wanted to make y’all a treat for signing up for IAmNotARestaurant.com, so I decided to give a friend’s hot chocolate recipe a whirl. Scott Campbell is the Executive Chef at the lovely New Leaf Restaurant & Bar in NYC, next to the Cloisters. Just a few ingredients and it’s a knockout! Scott calls for Valrohna cocoa powder and chocolate. I had Valrohna’s “Noir” from the chocolate show, but had to make do with another cocoa powder. I also snuck in 2 more tablespoons of sugar (sorry Scott, I think it was my cocoa powder) and cheated with 1%, not whole milk.

Here is his recipe:

1 quart whole milk

2 ounces Valrhona Cocoa Powder

1 ounce sugar

3 ounces Valrhona Chocolate, chunks

Pour milk and cocoa into a sauce pot and bring to a simmer and add sugar. Reduce heat to very low and add chocolate stirring occasionally until melted about 3-5 minutes. Strain hot chocolate through a chinoise (sieve!) and finish with Vanilla.

BTW I whipped the cream by hand after an incident in butter making via the KitchenAid this summer-first time I ever over whipped the cream! Our girls laughed their behinds off, but ate the butter with salt on fresh bread anyway.

That’s a cup of heavy cream, a shake or two of confectioners sugar and a dash of vanilla extract if you want. It didn’t take as long as I thought and the forearm got a workout.