Mexican Vanilla & Hot Chocolate

With my Nielsen-Massey Vanilla trio in hand, I am off to the hot chocolate races. First up, is the Mexican Vanilla. According to the Nielsen-Massey box, Mexican Vanilla is one of the best Vanillas for chocolate and cinnamon. This is perfect for my recipe! When I think of Mexico I think of fruity flavors…why… I don’t know but orange came to my head.

Nonetheless, the recipe I came up with was ¾ cup whole milk, 2 tsp Mexican Vanilla, 2 tbls Orange Juice, 1 Cinnamon stick, 1 tbls Sugar and 2 tbls of NoMU Cocoa Powder. The most important ingredient, of course, is the cocoa powder. The one selected for this brew is NoMU from Cape Town, South Africa. I found this bad boy on one of my many adventures back home to California. NoMU’s cocoa powder is Dutch Processed which means the cocoa was processed with an alkalizing agent (potassium carbonate) to remove the acidity from the cocoa.

In order to capture the true essence of the Vanilla, I decided to add the Vanilla and Cinnamon stick to the milk and let everything “marinate” in the ‘frig for a few hours.

A little while later, I added the rest of the ingredients to my double boiler, mixed it up and heated through. Since I can’t stand skim, I always heat my hot chocolate creations on a medium-low heat and stir consistently to avoid a skim appearance.

Since my husband’s friend Micah was visiting us, we had a hot chocolate and cocoa infused dessert festival. Micah thought the Mexican Hot Chocolate was “earthy and calming”. Also, he liked the after kick of the Orange Juice. Frank, my husband, enjoyed this one too, but he loves anything with chocolate.

Next up is the Tahitian Vanilla….

Nielsen-Massey Vanillas & Hot Chocolate

Vanilla is one of the most popular ingredients in hot chocolate. One of the perks of working at Williams-Sonoma was access to wonderful spices, ingredients and, of course, the employee discount.

One of my many purchases was a Nielsen-Massey Vanilla Extract sampler with three bottles of Vanilla from different regions of the world. It contains one 2 oz bottle of Mexican Vanilla Extract, Madagascar Vanilla Extract and Tahitian Vanilla Extract. Each bottle was very fragrant and I just know it has a delicious flavor. Now, I am ready to create some powerful hot chocolate recipes with this trio of taste.

Granita w/Anisette Sugar

My next frozen dessert adventure was with Chocolat Vital’s Cocoa Cardamom Tango Black Tea made with cinnamon, chocolate chips (sugar, cocoa mass, cocoa powder, emulsifier lecithin) cardamom, cardamom seeds and natural flavoring. With this fragrant tea, I know I have a winning recipe on hand to make Granita.

Granita or Granite is an iced Italian dessert. Since an ice cream maker isn’t necessary, the texture of the dessert is very coarse (look at my picture). To make this simple recipe, I brewed 2 cups of H20 with 1 tablespoon of tea and added ¾ cup of Anisette Sugar.

Unfortunately, Granite is not supposed to be very sweet, so I blew this recipe in theory. However, I think ½ cup sugar would be better since Anisette Sugar is very flavorful. To me, Anisette Sugar tastes like black licorice. Outside of this recipe or making an actual cup of hot chocolate, I wouldn’t touch this sugar but it added such a nice taste….

SerendipiTea ChocolaTea Sorbet

Now that I’ve recovered from a crashed hard drive and my recent work related travel, I am back on the blog! My frozen dessert rampage continues… This time I was busy creating a sorbet and granite with cocoa infused teas.

Sorbets are basically a frozen mixture of flavored ice usually enhanced with a fruit puree and sugar. A lot lighter than ice cream, sorbets are really great for those that are lactose intolerant since water is usually used vs. milk

After brewing up 3–½ cups of H20 with 3 tablespoons of serendipiTea’s ChocolaTea made with Chocolate, Vanilla, Rooibos and Black Tea, I added 1-½ cups of Demerara Sugar and ½ cup of cocoa nibs from Scharffen Berger. With the Ice Cream/Sorbet maker ready to go, I added the water mixture to the machine and hit the on button. Please make sure you let the tea get room temperature!!! What should have been an evening event turned into two days because I was too impatience to let the tea cool.

Twenty five minutes later, I had a yummy dessert. I must warn those not familiar with cocoa nibs they test nothing like chocolate chips (which is what they look like in the picture). These are definitely not sweet….they have a nutty robust flavor and are very crunchy. A cocoa nib is a roasted cacao bean separated from it’s shell and husk.

Normally, I am not a fan of cocoa nibs. But the contract of sweet and a little bitter was nice.

Making Chocolate Gelato

Inspired by an article I pulled out of Traditional Home called “Sassy Sorbet”, I decided to make some cocoa infused frozen desserts. My first attempt at a tasty frozen treat was to use my remaining white chocolate square with berries from Dylan’s Candy Bar. I grab my Trader Joe’s Organic Cocoa Powder made with criollo and trinitario cacao beans from Peru from the pantry along with the white chocolate, caster sugar and salt. Ohhh! This should be good!

I was off to the race. I used a recipe from the internet as a guide, but I added my own spin to the recipe. So, here is what I came up with…Chocolate Surprise Sorbet by Cocoa Connoisseur:

Ingredients:
1 ¼ c Caster Sugar (fine sugar)
3 1/3 c Water, Room Temperature
¼ c White Chocolate with Berries (from Dylan’s Candy Bar or something similar)
1 c Cocoa Powder
2 tsp Vanilla
Pinch Salt

Preparation:
Whisk together the Caster Sugar and Water in a bowl until sugar is dissolved. Add the Cocoa Powder, Vanilla and Salt to the sugar/water mixture until smooth.

Chop the White Chocolate with Berries into small pieces. Add the chopped White Chocolate chunks. Blend completely.

Pour the mixture into your ice cream maker’s freezer bowl. Follow your machine’s instruction book to start and operate the unit.


Personally, this stuff was delicious! My husband loved it so much he kept eating it. Then, the next day I come home from work and the sorbet is all gone!! What in the world…the man was claiming I was making him “fat” with these desserts.

If you ask me, that is a personal problem and he must have lost his mind throwing out a good batch of chocolate sorbet (I didn’t event get a picture of it yet). But in actuality, he was addicted and kept eating it. They say, “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach”. Well, I definitely won that battle!

Oh, back to the cacao beans. Both criollo and trinitario beans are grown in tropical regions within the latitudes of 20° South and 20° North of the equator. The temperature must consistently be between 70° to 77° F for the beans to flourish. Only about 1% of criollo and 14% of the trinitario are used to make chocolate. Both beans are quite flavorful, but unfortunately, they are not used in most of the chocolate we eat today (especially here in the USA). As for criollo beans, most of the beans produced are a criollo/trinitario hybrid with 2% to 5% cacao producing trees available. So, if you’re a label readier, look for criollo and trinitario for the best beans!

White Hot Chocolate?

After an early morning trip to the Houston Galleria, I stopped by one of my favorite stores...Dylan's Candy Bar. Instantly, I turn into a kid again. It was all about Fun Dip, Everlasting Gobstoppers and any other candy made by Willy Wonka. But of course, I don't stray too far from finding goodies to make hot chocolate.

I came across some squares of white chocolate mixed with dried fruit. I am not a fan of white chocolate because it really isn't chocolate. White chocolate is made with sugar, cocoa butter and milk. There isn't an ounce of chocolate liquor or cocoa solids/mass in it. So, why they call it "chocolate" is beyond me?

Nonetheless, when I got home I set up the double boiler and started up chopping up one square of the white chocolate. I added one cup of milk to the double boiler. Since I can't stand skin forming on my milk and I make sure I keep the temperature at Medium/Low. Once the milk was heated, I added the white chocolate w/berry pieces to the milk. After stirring frequently and watching the berries come away from the chocolate, I placed a strainer over my mug. I poured the yellowish colored mixture into the mug/strainer, leaving the berries behind.

Ahhhh! Finally, I sat down to enjoy my quick creation. Ohhhh! Too sugary for me? However, you can takes the essence of the berries. Cranberries were definitely was included in the mix. Oh well, I will save the other square for another adventure.