Creamy Hot Chocolate: a homemade recipe

Hot chocolate is a creamy and tasty drink made from milk, cocoa, chocolate and sugar, ideal for warming up the cold winter days accompanied by biscuits or sweets. Corn starch can be added to make it richer and it can be served with whipped cream.

Instructions

Pour the cold milk into a saucepan. 1 Then add the sifted corn starch and also add the cocoa powder, 2 stirring constantly to avoid the formation of lumps, 3 and then add the sugar.

In a separate saucepan, put the chopped chocolate 4 and melt it in bain-marie. As soon as the milk almost reaches the boil, add the melted chocolate and mix well with a whisk. 5 Continue to stir until the mixture is thick. Then pour the hot chocolate into the cups and add, if you want, some delicious whipped cream to flavor as you like. Your hot chocolate is ready to be served. 6

Tips

As a thickener, you can use potato starch or rice flour instead of corn starch: all ingredients that will make homemade hot chocolate richer and creamier. You can also replace the granulated sugar with the icing sugar.

You can flavor your hot chocolate as you like, adding for example coffee, cinnamon, caramel, vanilla or, for those who love strong flavors, a little chilli, ingredients that can also be used for decorations, as well as orange peel.

Instead of the classic dark chocolate, you can also use milk chocolate, white chocolate, gianduia chocolate, or the flavor you prefer, so as to prepare a different chocolate every time but always delicious. As for cocoa, however, use only the bitter one.

If the chocolate thickens too much, remove it from the heat and add a little hot milk, then stir quickly with a whisk: continue until it becomes fluider.

Drink the chocolate immediately and hot, in fact it cannot be stored or heated.

History of hot chocolate

Hot chocolate has ancient origins, it is said that the first to taste it was Hernan Cortès in the 16th century among the Aztec people: he was in fact offered a drink based on cocoa beans, water and spices, it was considered by the Aztecs to be an energy drink. Today hot chocolate is among the most appreciated and known drinks in the world thanks to its irresistible goodness.