Wednesday, March 28, 2007

KuDeTa Hot Chocolate ala Avi

The most delectable hot chocolate I have ever experienced was at KuDeTa in Bali. They serve you a pot of hot creamy milk that you pour over some large chunks of chocolate in a cup. Once the chocolate melts you end up with a perfectly balanced cup of hot chocolate milk. I was a bit nostalgic the other night so I decided to attempt my own KuDeTa special. So first of course I secured what I have accepted to be full crème milk. None of that skimmed shit will cut it.


You will need a good pot for boiling the milk. I do not like using any of that chemical Teflon coated nonsense when it comes to pots. Its one thing to have that in a wok or frying pan, but a little burn in a classic metal pot adds flavor.



For the chocolate part of this beverage I have opted to utilize the Lotte Ghana Chocolate I recently came by at 7-11. It is best to use dark chocolate for cooking because it really packs the flavor, although one would think a smooth nutty milk chocolate would really add essence, it is just too weak.



I like to get my milk up to a good frothy boil and then leave it to simmer for a few minutes while I make final preparations. Once again I must warn anyone cooking hot milk to practice extreme caution. It can leave a nasty burn.



I carefully place my large tea cup next to, but not too close to the gas cooker.



Taking the bite size bars of dark Ghana chocolate, I place 4 of them into the cup.


Once I pour the piping hot milk over the pieces of chocolate and into the cup, I begin to stir immediately. The chocolate did not take long to dissolve into the mixture turning the creamy milk into hot chocolate. However there were tiny bubbles of oil floating on top of my hot chocolate that were not so pleasant. This I deducing is residue from the cocoa butter used to make the chocolate. I think this might be avoided if I used pure dark cooking chocolate. Also the milk was not too sweet and had a mellow chocolate flavor which I liked. If you are into the sweet thing then you might want to add sugar or honey.

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