Our best wishes to all Moms!
We thought we’d post something kids and moms can enjoy together: hot chocolate.
Hot Chocolate
We recommend some combination of whole milk or heavy cream, dark chocolate, and coconut milk or coconut oil.
We like ours thick so we used cream and coconut oil. (Shou-Ching suggests mixing some coffee with the cream — for Mom only! (Paul suggests some Irish whiskey.)) We used 72% chocolate, which is sweet but not too sweet.
We mixed about 100 g chocolate with a heaping tablespoon (~2 tbsp) coconut oil and 1 cup cream. Melt the chocolate with the oil in a sauce pan:
Then add the cream or milk and stir until well mixed:
Whipped Cream
It wouldn’t be hot chocolate without whipped cream on top. We use 1 cup heavy whipping cream and 1 tbsp rice syrup as a sweetener.
We do the preparation in the same plastic container we’ll use to store the extra whipped cream – less cleanup that way:
Whip the cream, then add the rice syrup and whip some more:
Serve
Transfer everything to a mug and top with cinnamon or nutmeg:
Happy Mother’s Day everyone!
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Your hot chocolate looks dreamy. 🙂
Happy Mother’s Day to Shou-Ching.
I’ve been eating a few squares of 90% chocolate daily. I figured the less sugar the better, and I enjoy it nonetheless.
I had a cup of coconut cocoa tea(which is also very nice with a splash of coconut milk) – the girls and I had strawberries and cream yesterday morning so I am a bit whipped creamed out – but there is nothing quite like fresh whipped cream. Yum!
Another great recipe idea. Quick question about coconut oil. I use it as my main cooking fat but have heard Sally Fallon mention in a couple of interviews she did that coconut oil does not have a high smoke point. What are good cooking oils?
Thanks
Hi Monika,
Clarifed butter/ghee, beef tallow, olive oil are all good cooking oils that can stand high temperatures.
We’ve been using beef fat a lot. But we also cook at low temperatures most of the time, and so use coconut oil a lot.
I was under the impression that coconut oil out of all those would withstand high heat since (my understanding is elementary) it is highly saturated. That olive oil is better suited to high temperatures would be news to me (and I suspect many)?
Hi Greg,
Wikipedia has a nice table of smoke points: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_point
Basically, it’s more a matter of impurities / organic compounds than the oil itself.
Refined coconut oil has a smoke point of 450 F, but extra virgin unrefined only 350 F.
Similarly, olive oil smoke points vary from 375 to 468 F.
Butter is very low if unclarified but clarified butter would be high.
Best, Paul
Hi, Monika and Greg.
By at least one nutrition researcher I know, red palm oil is favored over coconut oil, mainly due to the way in which coconut oil seems to metabolize differently when not consumed along with the other parts of the nut–meat, milk, etc.–as it is consumed in cultures where coconut is more of a dietary staple. Since red palm oil seems to be more cleanly metabolized even without the regular consumption of its other constituents, it becomes lower maintenance as food and therefore, preferable.
As a virgin(unrefined) oil, red palm also makes more sense to me for cooking than other oils low in PUFAs such as olive or even avocado, which will both be denatured by moderate to high heat applications. I always favor foods, esp. fats and oils, in their least refined state. Hence, I use EVOO either cold or combined with a “high-heat” stable oil, and coconut oil either as a supplement or in its just-melted liquid state, i.e to add to a delicious recipe like hot chocolate!
I highly recommend visiting the website of Rebecca Wood for more insight into oils/fats for whole foods cooking.
Mark, thanks for the reply. I recently have seen red palm oil in my local health food store(I am from Austria). What do you think about the taste? I read it is pretty unusual. How would you describe it?
It is … spicy! Definitely a unique taste.
Hi Paul,
A little OT but I wanted to know if you are familiar with mochi rice, I think is a bit higher in amylopectin, is that a good or bad thing?
Anyway I love it, specially the flour which I mix with a little water, grated coconut & microwaved for a few minutes, turn out like a spongy coconut instant cake.
Cheers!
Hi Grace,
Mochi rice is great, we endorse it!
Monika,
It’s sort of a smoky flavor which does make it a little less versatile than coconut, used alone. It may depend on the brand, too, as to how strong it tastes. Consider blending it with, or substituting it with virgin macadamia oil. Most virgin mac oil brands I’ve used are mild enough; yet one brand I recently tried has a stronger flavor which suggests that the nuts were roasted before pressing.
I’m curious which brand(s)of palm oil are sold there in Austria…
Oh, your hot chocolate looks heavenly! Never thought of melting chocolate to make hot choc, as I usually use unsweetened cocoa powder with milk and cream sweetened with chopped palm sugar since it’s a solid type. I’m still hunting for rice syrup in Tokyo and luckily a friend only recently told me where I can get it. Is there a lot of difference between brown and white rice syrup? What is your preference? Thank you.
Mark,
the brand I can get here is Amanprana. It is a company form Belgium.
oh yeah and they also have Palm Kernel oil. Is that also good for cooking?
Hi Wati,
White rice syrup is relatively free of flavor, brown rice syrup has a distinctive taste which may not go with all foods. It does fine in ice cream and whipped cream which is mainly what we use it for.
Hi Monika,
Palm kernel oil has a composition like coconut oil – lots of short-chain fatty acids – so a slightly lower smoke point than palm oil, but it is a very healthy oil. Great for moderate or low-temperature cooking.
Paul, did you know that MacDonald’s used to use palm oil for their fries until about 25 years ago when the nutrition nazi’s made them change to a “healthier” vegetable oil.
Yes!
McDonald’s had extremely healthy fries until about 1991 or so. They used beef tallow primarily I think.
When I was a kid McDonald’s fries were extremely addictive. Now, they don’t excite me. I assume they don’t taste as good as the healthy ones did – it’s not just my tastes changing.
Omg, 1 cup, no whipped cream, half skim milk, is 600 calories!
Hi tam,
Luckily Mother’s Day comes only once a year!
In looking for some tips to lower blood pressure in the healing Spices book, which some kind person mentioned here a while back
http://www.amazon.com/Healing-Spices-Everyday-Exotic-Disease/dp/1402776632/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1349798252&sr=8-1&keywords=healing+spices
I found that the benefits of cocoa. Are reduced when mixed with milk. It inhibits the body from absorbing as many of the flavanols as you would without any milk.
I wonder,though, if coconut milk would have the same limiting effect.
In any case this morning I made some cocoa with vanilla extract, cinnamon, a pinch of clove and stevia powder instead of sugar.
Hey Paul,
Love the book and love how I feel since starting to eat this way. I just have a quick question about pasteurized dairy…. I live in Canada and belong to an “semi-Illegal” raw milk cow share.. I can get all sorts of raw dairy from the share but I just can’t stomach the butter and cream.. it has a very strong raw dairy taste. I am just curious in your opinion how pasteurized dairy compares with raw? if raw dairy is 10 is pasteurized a 7 or 8 or more like a 4 or 5? I drink the milk regularly but just can’t handle the fattier stuff. thanks for your time!
Hi BS,
Pasteurized dairy is OK if you are not sensitive to it, but it is more likely to cause food sensitivities due to the difficulty of digesting some of the proteins.
just started ur diet, might leave this for a week or two as a cup of cream makes me want to gag atm…LOL