Simple Home Made Hot Chocolate with Almond Milk to Die For

Ok, here’s an essential question you’ve got to ask yourself right now:

How do you like your hot chocolate? We like ours rich, silky, creamy, smooth, luxurious and enchanting 🙂

Today we are sharing a back-to-basics simple – yet absolutely magical – home-made way to make spiced, raw cacao, plant-based ‘hot chocolate’ drink that is truly heartwarming and is definitely one of our staple drinks during cold winter months.

Ingredients:

(serves 2)

• 60g of Arriba Nacional or other high-grade, sustainably sourced raw cacao liquor (100% cacao with no sweetener)
• 3 TBLS raw almond butter
• 1 TBLS coconut butter
• 3 TBLS maple syrup
• 1 TBLS raw honey or other coconut sugar
• 1-2 TBLS of algaroba/lucuma powder
• seeds from 4-5 cardamom pods
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp of Chaga or another medicinal mushroom extract (we like to wild things up a little!)
• seeds from 1/2 a vanilla pod or 1 tsp vanilla essence
• pinch of unprocessed sea salt
• 600-1000ml of water (up to you how rich you’d like to go!)

Method:

Step 1: Make almond milk by blending almond butter with just enough water to cover the blades of your blender till you get a smooth cream. Add the rest of the water, a pinch of salt, cardamom, vanilla, cinnamon, and 1 TBLS of sweetener. Blend again.

Step 2: Divide the milk in half. Pour one half of the milk in a pot with cacao liquor, coconut oil, 3 TBLS of sweetener (maple syrup) over low heat. Stir slowly. When the cacao liquor starts to melt (approx 65 degrees C), pour the contents of the pot into a high-speed blender, add 1-2 TBLS of algaroba/lucuma, Chaga extract and blend till you get a rich and smooth chocolatey drink.

Step 3: Slowly heat the remaining almond milk to approx 65 degrees C while stirring.

Step 4: Serve by filling half a glass or cup with the rich chocolate almond milk. Then slowly pour your warmed ‘white’ almond milk on top, leaving froth last.

Enjoy!