The best part about winter is hot chocolate. I think we can all agree on that.
Think of it: You're out in the snow. Your feet are wet. Your toes ache. Your nose is running. You can't feel your fingers. You have been shivering so long you don't remember what it is like to not shiver.
And then you come into a house and someone hands you a steaming cup of hot chocolate. And suddenly you are suffused with happiness and warmth.
It doesn't even have to be good hot chocolate. You have much the same reaction even if the hot chocolate came in powdered form out of one of those paper envelopes.
So think of how much better it would be to have hot chocolate that is actually homemade. And not only homemade, but the best, silkiest, most luxurious hot chocolate anyone has ever made anywhere in the world. Ever.
I happen to have the recipe for the best ever hot chocolate. Not only that, I happen to have the two recipes for the two best ever hot chocolates. These are hot chocolates that could possibly change your life.
And what if that cold temperature should suddenly become warm? I turned one of those hot chocolates into ice cream, too.
The hot chocolate ice cream is probably the chocolatiest ice cream you've ever had.
I started with a mug of mind-blowingly good Parisian Hot Chocolate. The French are widely thought to have the best food in the world, so it makes sense that they would also make the best hot chocolate.
Their secret is a step I never would have even considered: They caramelize the sugar. That is, they slowly melt the sugar until it turns a rich amber in color and turning it into caramel. They add the milk to that — milk, note, not cream — which makes a hot caramel milk.
Finally, they stir in heaps of finely chopped bittersweet chocolate, the finest quality they can find and afford.
The taste, and especially the texture, is that of a smooth, velvety chocolate. The bittersweet chocolate has just enough edge to it to keep it from becoming cloying, and this balance is further heightened by serving the drink with chantilly whipped cream, sweetened whipped cream with more than a hint of vanilla.
I made my own chantilly whipped cream, which goes with this chocolate like Laurel goes with Hardy. I did it right, too, using the seeds from half of a vanilla bean. But vanilla beans are expensive, especially now, because Madagascar is still trying to recover from a couple of catastrophic storms that devastated the crop.
If you want to use vanilla extract instead of the vanilla bean, I won't complain. You could even use whipped cream that comes out of a can, though it would lack that soothing vanilla presence.
Just don't serve Parisian Hot Chocolate with marshmallows. It would ruin the effect; this hot chocolate needs whipped cream like Abbott needs Costello.
I used the Parisian Hot Chocolate recipe to make the ice cream, and it wasn't an immediate success. Because the recipe is made with milk instead of cream, the texture was granular and stiff. And although the bittersweet chocolate is exactly the correct ingredient to use in hot chocolate, it is a touch too bitter for ice cream.
Also, it needs salt. I don't know why, but it needs salt.
So I made batch after batch after batch (OK, three batches) of ice cream, tweaking it each time. What I ended up with is a base made with both whole milk and heavy cream, with piles of semisweet chocolate instead of bittersweet. And salt, of course. I don't know why.
Those changes made it a peerless chocolate ice cream that tastes just like hot chocolate, only colder.
The other hot chocolate I made comes from Claridge's, the ultra-luxe hotel in London. Their method of making hot chocolate is, naturally, brilliant.
First, they make ganache — they melt chocolate (only the best, of course) and stir in hot cream until it is thoroughly blended and sumptuous. Then, they heat a pot of milk.
The hot chocolate is made by mixing the ganache and the steaming milk. How simple is that? How delicious?
The genius of this method is that each individual can mix his own ratio of ganache to milk. That way, you can make it as rich and decadent as you want.
I made mine with almost as much ganache as milk. It was divine. Maybe it wasn't so great for the arteries, but it was divine.
