Hot Chocolate

Shown here, spiraling in clockwise from the top left, Dagoba hot chocolate, Vosges Aztec Elixir, Max Brenner Dark Chocolate (orange peel oil), Nestle Abuelita, Jacques Torres Wicked Hot Chocolate, Dagoba Unsweetened Hot Chocolate, Dagoba Xocolatl, Green & Black's Organic Hot Chocolate, Ibarra Mexican Chocolate, Domori Hot Chocolate, Domori Very Hot Chocolate and Moonstruck Mexican Hot Cocoa.

This was actually my first attempt at taking a picture of all the mixes. Nice concept, bad execution.

Posted by Viren at 07:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Domori Hot Chocolate
Overall: ***

Domori hot chocolate is very much a drinking chocolate. A rich, dessert-like drink, it is meant to be slowly sipped at the end of a meal. The taste of good, dark chocolate is very evident throughout the experience, though it seemed to me that there was just a taste of of bitterness present.

The "mix" itself consists of thin, flat chocolate sticks that need to be mixed into milk or water. The recommended recipe is 9 sticks (each package comes with 72 sticks) dissolved into 60ml of heated water or milk. This gives you a small cup of overwhelmingly chocolatey experience. I actually tried it with a cup of milk and even then the chocolate was very evident. The best part was being able to lick the chocolate dregs from the bottom of the mug (melted chocolate readings, anyone?).

I think that the chocolate used in this mix is good, and the taste very obviously comes through (it has a minimum of 65% cacao). However, I prefer my dark chocolate in a solid form (you can eat the hot chocolate sticks. They taste good), and my hot chocolate to be more towards the hot cocoa variety. Hence, this doesn't rank quite as high in my rankings as some of the other more cocoa-oriented mixes. I also tend to stay away from mixes (usually drinking chocolate mixes) which include cocoa butter or milk fats, since that detracts from the cocoa experience.

Recipe used: A cup of 1% milk heated to just below boiling and then 9 sticks slowly dissolved in to the milk.

Posted by Viren at 01:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, I discovered through TreeHugger, that there's an online store that will sell only fair-trade products. This, of course, includes chocolate. Check it out: Fair Trade Online Store. Yes, they do sell Dagoba! But, they need to expand their chocolate and hot chocolate selection and include some of the other fair-trade chocolate products.

Posted by Viren at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)