Chocolate Ibarra Authentic Mexican Hot Chocolate

Seeing as we’re peeking into Autumn here in the Southern Hemisphere I thought I’d get back to my hot chocolate testing! This is particularly so after spying this little item at The Essential Ingredient during my recent trip back to my hometown, Canberra.

When I was 21 I went to the U.S. and Mexico, and loved the coffee and hot chocolate I had south of the border. They put HEAPS of cinnamon in everything which added a wonderful fragrance to these drinks. As I was browsing the shelves at the Essential Ingredient, in particular eyeing off the 5 kgs bags of lindt (omigod!) I noticed this little brightly coloured package:

The guy at the shop assured me that this chocolate was superb, so I was very excited to get home and try it with Da Boyfriend, a fellow chocolate fiend!

On opening we found a small imprinted block. Just like a hockey puck!

With difficulty I cut it in half. It glistened with sugar, and I love on the packet that it stated: “Because of it’s nature chocolate doesn’t contain cholesterol” Yeah, just fat! 🙂

So after wrestling the puck and chopping off a couple of the triangles I popped them in mugs with some milk and chucked them in the microwave:

Hmmm, it took a couple of goes to get the chocolate to melt and the milk hot enough, and to break up the chocolate. A clue that perhaps there wasn’t a high cocoa butter content. After some more mixing and getting out the mini whisk we had our hot chocolate!

Sadly, I’m not a fan. Way too much sugar and not enough cocoa solids…lovely fragrance from the cinnamon though!

There’s some great info here on the history of chocolate in Mexico, so I’ll have another go using the methods and recipes they suggest.