Warm up with the richest and most creamy cup with hot chocolate – garden and weapon

Your chocolate to drink, says Danielle Centeno, is as good as the chocolate you use to do it. She would know it – she exploits Escazú, an artisanal chocolate factory in Raleigh, in North Carolina, since 2008, applying beans from all of Latin America, but mainly from her native country in Venezuela.

Although Escazú specializes in chocolate bars and confections, bestsellers are a sea salt bar and a bar of milk chocolate accentuated with powdered goat milk – the shop also serves hot drinks, including drinking chocolate. “It smells of brownies,” says Centeno about the decadent drink. “It is thick, but not as thick as the ganache.”

The most important part of the recipe is chocolate itself. “Use chocolate from your little favorite bean chocolate,” says Centeno. Opt for a cocoa and sugar bar and perhaps a third ingredient, cocoa butter (the fat of the cocoa bean). “This hot chocolate recipe is intended to present the flavor of chocolate, and not to hide it,” she says. “The magic is in chocolate – make up a bar you know you like it and it will most likely make a delicious cup of hot chocolate.”

From there you can be creative; Buy a bar with a higher percentage of cocoa, between 75 and 85%, and omit the sugar from the recipe; Try a unique original chocolate to really let its distinctive flavors shine; Play with the milk / chocolate ratio to find your favorite creamy level. And ESAZú staff, including the Centeno trading partner, Tiana Young, likes to throw extras, including a pinch of cayenne powder for a spicy kick, peanut butter to make it more generous, cinnamon for the depth of flavor – or, even better, all three together. As Centeno says, “it's as much instinct as science.”

A pinch of cayenne pepper powder.