La cioccolata calda =Hot sipping chocolate is a sweet drink made from milk, sugar and cocoa or chocolate, with a dark taste and a thick and creamy consistency! A delicious winter cuddle This is  our family recipe o, perfect for cold winter evenings sitting in front of the fireplace,

it is also ideal as a dessert after dinner, accompanied by  preferred biscuits/cookies or whipped cream dusted with cocoa, or a slice of cake or Amor polenta. Kids will love it too!

chocolate recipe for 2 cups
 50 g =1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder  
80 g=3/8 cup caster sugar  
24 g =1/4 cup potato starch (or cornstarch)
 400 / 500 ml = 1 ½ cup or 2 cups whole milk (or vegetable milk or no lactose))
1 cinnamon stick
Ingredients

PROCEDURE

How to make hot chocolate

Boil 300 ml of milk with cinnamon. Turn off the heat

With a hand whisk mix together cocoa, sugar and starch:

Gradually add the first 100 ml of milk, stirring until the mixture is free of lumps and nice dense

place on low heat continuing to add the remaining 300 ml of milk flush, set aside 100 ml to evaluate the final consistency

Always turn, over low heat ,with the hand whisk, within 3 minutes it will thicken.

I love the very thick consistency, like the one you see in the picture, but it is also excellent more liquid with the addition of milk, according to taste!

Here is your hot chocolate!

 We have flavored hot chocolate with cinnamon, but you can also perfume it with vanilla or chilli or melt in a piece of dark chocolate.

You can safely keep it in the fridge for 2 – 3 days and heat it at the moment with 1 – 2 tablespoons of milk, always turning with a hand whisk! it will be as delicious as just made!

The history of hot chocolate in Italy

When hot chocolate began to spread in Europe, during the seventeenth century,people used a cocoa paste solidified in bars or rolls, grated when needed (and this procedure lasted until 1828, when the Dutchman Van Houten  “invented” cocoa powder).

. Served in chocolatiers with horizontal handles, the typically aristocratic custom of consuming the drink  lead to the creation of very refined utensils and serving crockery, first in porcelain, then in silver .

In Italy Francesco d’Antonio Carletti, a Florentine merchant who returned from a trip to the New World, introduced the custom at the beginning of the seventeenth century. In the Italian aristocratic salons adding floral aromas – such as jasmine – or fruity, such as cedar or lemon were experimented.

In Turin the drink arrived thanks to Emanuele Filiberto di Savoia: in 1678, a chocolatier was the first to obtain authorization from the Royal House of Savoy to publicly sell the “chocolate in drink” in the city. But until the eighteenth century, there was the  resistance of those who considered chocolate a lustful food.

The British, on the other hand, are responsible for the choice of diluting cocoa with milk, instead of water.

Among the most famous lovers of hot chocolate is the Austrian composer Mozart, who not by chance elects the “cioco latte as a remedy for lovesickness in the comic opera” Così fan tutte “.

Today la Cioccolata calda =hot chocolate (the adjective “hot” is introduced only in modern times, to distinguish the liquid drink from solid chocolate) is a kind of comfort consumed all over the world, according to local custom.

Season’s Greetings !Auguri per le Feste !!!