Homemade Hot Chocolate Recipe (Hot Cocoa) (2024)

FAQs

Is hot chocolate and hot cocoa the same thing? ›

Hot Chocolate is made using solid chocolate melted in warm milk or cream. Hot Cocoa, however, is made from a powdered base of cocoa with added sugar and dissolved in hot water or hot milk.

In a saucepan, combine sugar, cocoa and salt. Add water; bring to a boil. Cook and stir for 2 minutes. Stir in milk; heat to serving temperature (do not boil).

In short, you can use hot chocolate powder as a cocoa powder substitute in a pinch, but you may not experience the depth of flavour you want. Because most brands of hot chocolate powder include sugar or sweetener, you may wish to reduce the amount of sugar you add to your baking recipe.

If you're looking for something thick, rich and packed with chocolatey flavor, hot chocolate is the way to go. For convenience and nostalgia, it doesn't get much better than a cup of hot cocoa with some marshmallows on top.

In terms of ranking, we agreed that the cocoa made with milk provided an ultra-smooth experience and was our favorite. However, we were pleasantly surprised by how much we enjoyed the water-based cocoa. While it wasn't as creamy as the milk, it had its benefits.

Hot chocolate, also known as hot cocoa or drinking chocolate, is a heated drink consisting of shaved or melted chocolate or cocoa powder, heated milk or water, and usually a sweetener. It is often garnished with whipped cream or marshmallows.

It Started in Mexico

As early as 500 BC, the Mayans were drinking chocolate made from ground-up cocoa seeds mixed with water, cornmeal, and chili peppers (as well as other ingredients)—a much different version from the hot chocolate we know today.

Cocoa powder, even though it looks and feels dry, it still has some element of fat from cocoa butter. So in order for it to dissolve, it needs to be heated. You can which do it into hot milk, or make a slurry of cocoa powder and hot milk or water, then add that to milk.

The key is to use unsweetened cocoa powder. On it's own, it tastes very bitter and not sweet at all. The only ingredient in the store-bought brand you buy should be cocoa.

Terminology. A distinction is sometimes made between "hot cocoa", made from cocoa powder (ground cacao beans from which much of the cocoa butter has been removed), and "hot chocolate", made directly from bar chocolate, which already contains cocoa, sugar, and cocoa butter.

Do Americans say hot chocolate or hot cocoa? ›

Image of two cups of hot cocoa topped with whipped cream, with a pair of spoons and a ceramic chocolate pot. Hershey's cookbooklet, 1937. In the United States, the terms "hot chocolate" and "hot cocoa" are used pretty interchangeably, but they aren't quite the same thing!

But we also noticed that many Americans do not know that hot cocoa and hot chocolate are two distinct chocolate drinks. The confusion is almost universal among Americans even though they have different compositions. The difference is simple: one has cocoa butter, while the other does not.

Cocoa and chocolate are both made from the beans of the cocoa pod. They are difference in the step of extracting, and the components inside are not the same. Chocolate is the fermentation of cocoa beans to produce microorganisms and accelerate many nutrients in cocoa beans for maximum efficiency.