An adaptation of one of the oldest recorded recipes for hot chocolate!
We've done a lot of talking about hot chocolate on this blog, as well as chocolate in general. I've provided a review of American Heritage chocolate, tried out the official Josefina approved recipe for New Mexican hot chocolate, toasted marshmallows on top of hot chocolate, and even tried out champurrado, a recipe with links to some of the earliest ways human beings have enjoyed chocolate.
The recipe we're trying out today is one of the recipes featured as part of the Folger Shakespear Library's First Chefs exhibit, which I've also shared with you guys before. All the recipes featured online and as handouts at the exhibit were adapted from historical recipes by Marissa Nicosia, a food historian who experiments with recipes from the 1600's through the 1800's. You can read more about her work on her website Rare Cooking.
So, what makes this recipe different from the ones we've tried before?
The recipe we're trying out today is one of the recipes featured as part of the Folger Shakespear Library's First Chefs exhibit, which I've also shared with you guys before. All the recipes featured online and as handouts at the exhibit were adapted from historical recipes by Marissa Nicosia, a food historian who experiments with recipes from the 1600's through the 1800's. You can read more about her work on her website Rare Cooking.
So, what makes this recipe different from the ones we've tried before?
Well, first off, most of the other recipes I've made don't really result in something that can be packaged up and gifted to people as part of a very late holiday gift swap, which was part of my motivation for trying it out. I've never made my own hot chocolate mix before, and I was eager to see if this could become a standard gift to offer people, as well as something handy to have around when you have company in the winter. (Theoretically, anyway. It's been so hot this winter that hot chocolate has been the furthest thing from my mind on most days.)
The other reason I was intrigued by it is the very flashy history the Folger Library and Marissa Nicosia uncovered in this recipe.
The original recipe that inspired this adaptation isn't exactly a recipe at all, but rather a description of traditional methods of preparing cacao for consumption as a frothy, thick beverage by Native communities in the Americas. It was described by William Hughes in his 1672 book The American Physitian. Who was William Hughes? A botanist who also happened to be a pirate. Or a pirate who happened to be a botanist.
Hughes first visited the Americas in the 1630's or 40's, and his book offers readers one of the first eyewitness accounts by an Englishman of cacao planting and production. He provides descriptions of plenty of other edible plants in the book, but his section on cacao is the longest section by far. Until this point in history, most of England's upper classes had regarded chocolate suspiciously, but his engaging description may have helped them warm to the idea of the interesting drink. By the time Felicity was growing up, hot chocolate was becoming more and more affordable for the British, and hot chocolate became an important substitute for tea when American Patriots refused to drink tea in protest of England's new tax laws. George Washington even enjoyed drinking hot chocolate, and Martha Washington was fond of steeping cacao shells in hot water to make a more tea-like beverage.
The other reason I was intrigued by it is the very flashy history the Folger Library and Marissa Nicosia uncovered in this recipe.
The original recipe that inspired this adaptation isn't exactly a recipe at all, but rather a description of traditional methods of preparing cacao for consumption as a frothy, thick beverage by Native communities in the Americas. It was described by William Hughes in his 1672 book The American Physitian. Who was William Hughes? A botanist who also happened to be a pirate. Or a pirate who happened to be a botanist.
Hughes first visited the Americas in the 1630's or 40's, and his book offers readers one of the first eyewitness accounts by an Englishman of cacao planting and production. He provides descriptions of plenty of other edible plants in the book, but his section on cacao is the longest section by far. Until this point in history, most of England's upper classes had regarded chocolate suspiciously, but his engaging description may have helped them warm to the idea of the interesting drink. By the time Felicity was growing up, hot chocolate was becoming more and more affordable for the British, and hot chocolate became an important substitute for tea when American Patriots refused to drink tea in protest of England's new tax laws. George Washington even enjoyed drinking hot chocolate, and Martha Washington was fond of steeping cacao shells in hot water to make a more tea-like beverage.
Nicosia's adaptation of William Hughes's recipe is my favorite kind of recipe: toast your cacao nibs, dump all the ingredients in one bowl, mix together, blend, serve mixed into hot milk. Very little fuss, and not too much by way of clean up, especially if you've got a dishwasher safe blender. Early hot chocolates frequently featured spices we find either strange or exotic in chocolate today, like nutmeg or hot peppers, and Nicosia encourages readers to tweak the flavor profile depending on what your personal preferences are. I'm in agreement with her, as although the standard recipe is definitely nice and flavorful, I wanted more spices in it to make it taste closer to the chocolate produced by American Heritage Chocolate.
If you're interested in following along, the recipe is available on the Folger Library's website, or you can just toast 1/4 of a cup of cacao nibs until they're shiny and smell very chocolatey, then add them to a bowl with a 100 gram 70% dark chocolate bar which has been roughly chopped, 1/2 of a cup of cocoa powder, 1/2 of a cup of sugar, 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract, 1/4 of a cup of plain bread crumbs (this will make the drink authentically thick), and 1/2 teaspoon of chili flakes. I also added two teaspoons of cinnamon and nutmeg for some extra spicy flavors.
Pulse this in a blender until they're combined "in a loose mix" per the recipe's instructions, and you're ready to start making hot chocolate.
The recipe makes approximately two cups of mix, and recommends you use three tablespoons per one cup of hot milk. You should be able to get a good amount of servings in with your batch or be able to adjust accordingly pretty easily if you're planning on hosting a big crowd, or otherwise need a lot of mix to distribute to folks. Or yourself. No judgment here.
My only complaint is that the chocolate bar melts with the heat of the blender whirring, so it can get kind of lumpy even if you're making your best attempt at blending everything equally.
Otherwise? This is a really great recipe, and I'd definitely recommend giving it a try yourself!
If you're interested in following along, the recipe is available on the Folger Library's website, or you can just toast 1/4 of a cup of cacao nibs until they're shiny and smell very chocolatey, then add them to a bowl with a 100 gram 70% dark chocolate bar which has been roughly chopped, 1/2 of a cup of cocoa powder, 1/2 of a cup of sugar, 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract, 1/4 of a cup of plain bread crumbs (this will make the drink authentically thick), and 1/2 teaspoon of chili flakes. I also added two teaspoons of cinnamon and nutmeg for some extra spicy flavors.
Pulse this in a blender until they're combined "in a loose mix" per the recipe's instructions, and you're ready to start making hot chocolate.
The recipe makes approximately two cups of mix, and recommends you use three tablespoons per one cup of hot milk. You should be able to get a good amount of servings in with your batch or be able to adjust accordingly pretty easily if you're planning on hosting a big crowd, or otherwise need a lot of mix to distribute to folks. Or yourself. No judgment here.
My only complaint is that the chocolate bar melts with the heat of the blender whirring, so it can get kind of lumpy even if you're making your best attempt at blending everything equally.
Otherwise? This is a really great recipe, and I'd definitely recommend giving it a try yourself!
Let us know if you do!
It looks yummy. Felicity is smiling.
ReplyDeleteI visited the Wilbur's Chocolate Factory in PA before it moved and saw wonderful chocolate pots, which, of course,look like teapots.