Xocolatl revisited

Last night, we made truffles using the Cook’s Illustrated recipe. It’s from an older issue and I’d been skipping over it for years, always assuming it would be a bit too involved for me. I don’t shy away from cooking most things, but for some reason desserts have always intimidated me a bit. It was the first time I used a pastry bag! The hardest part was getting the tip adaptor off the used bag when it was slippery and covered with ganache.

We had a lot of dutch process cocoa powder left over, as well as some chocolate we’d used to coat the truffles, so this morning I had a go at improvising xocolatl. I mentioned a recipe a few weeks ago, but haven’t been able to find cocoa butter locally, and it doesn’t help when the recipe specifies amounts by the package of a particular product, because they don’t translate well between regions or markets.

My recipe was based on the hot chocolate recipe on the side of the Hershey’s Dutch Process Cocoa box:

3 TBS dutch process cocoa
1 TBS sugar
2 TBS melted dark chocolate
1/4 cup water
1-3/4 cups milk
1/4 tsp chile powder (I like chipotle but use what you like)

Mix the cocoa powder, sugar, and water in a small saucepot. Bring to a boil, stirring well to mix the dry ingredients. Add dark chocolate and milk. Heat but do not boil. Add chile powder and serve.

This beverage was tasty, but not as thick or rich as I was hoping it would be. Next time, I may try using half and half instead of milk.