French Hot Chocolate

La Charlotte de l'Isle

24 rue Saint Louis en l'Ile

75004 Paris

France

Only a couple of months ago I would have considered warm milk and powder perfectly respectable grounds for a hot chocolate drink. How wrong I was, avid reader, how wrong. My re-education began with my first experience of real hot chocolate (made with real, hot, chocolate) from a Cambridge chocolatier earlier this year. Then, more recently I was taken to La Charlotte de I'sle, a tiny tea shop in Paris which doubles up as a weekly venue for puppet shows. Three of us ordered their luxuriously thick, dark chocolate drink, which came in a beaten-up ceramic pitcher with little shot glasses of water to wash it down. Intense, creamy, and rich, we got through the entire jug like the gluttons we are. Afterwards, having squeezed ourselves out of the shop and into a cold Parisian February, I glanced up and noticed in the near distance the Notre Dame, which in retrospect was quite interesting.

Hot Choc Shot

Sometimes pictures are better than words and this is one of those times: just looking at these warm and boozy chocolate shots seems to play havoc with the salivary glands. Inspired by a revelatory hot chocolate experience last month, this little creation is not necessarily recommended for those on strict diets. For everyone else, it's best made in batches, so multiply the ingredients accordingly.

Hot Choc Shot

15ml (0.5oz) crème de cacao blanc

1.5 squares dark chocolate

15ml (0.5oz) cream

1/4 teaspoon icing sugar

Whipped cream topping

Add chocolate, cream and icing sugar to a pan on the hob and stir until mixed and melted. Add crème de cacao and stir again. Pour into a shot glass and top with fresh whipped cream.

This was my first attempt at using crème de cacao, a clear, dryish cocoa liqueur (25% vol), and it worked out nicely, making the drink boozy and extra chocolatey without overdoing the richness. Originally I tried vodka instead but it overpowered the chocolate somewhat, and we can't be having that. The fresh cream was whipped with my NO2-charged cream whipper, which is fast becoming useful as well as fun to play with. I would have described the Hot Choc Shot as a great after-dinner drink - but I can't imagine turning one down at any time of day.

Hot Shake

ShakeAway

22 Lion Yard

Cambridge CB2 3NA

Everyone's had a milkshake, plenty have tried a hard shake. But a hot shake? This was a new one on me. I'm quite fond of ShakeAways, with their giant menus of ludicrous combinations (Farley's Rusk and caramel shortbread shake, anyone?). My favourite ingredient is Reese's Cups, which I put down to a formidable Marathon milkshake I had as a teenager, made from peanut butter and ice cream. Walking past a ShakeAway recently, on a day as cold as Greenland, I was confronted with the most provocative pink and yellow sign: "Winter warmers. Hot milkshakes." Which is how I ended up with a piping hot Reese's Cup shake. I think they must have used steamed milk in place of some, if not all, of the ice cream, because this drink was thin. Still tasty, mind: warming and peanutty and salt/sweet. If the weather stays like this for much longer I may have to go back for another one. But as soon as it's warm enough to remove my balaclava it's back to the ice cold thick shakes and no mistake.

Ciocchino Hot Chocolate

Chocolat Chocolat
21 St. Andrews Street
Cambridge CB2 3AX

This tiny paper cup of hot chocolate was intense. I identified it later as Ciocchino "Italian-style" drinking chocolate. Forget cocoa powder and water, this drink was made from real dark chocolate blended with a "light dairy whipping cream alternative" (whatever that is), and was quite something. Indeed, it appealed to me far more than the rest of the shop's chocolates, with their fussy sprinklings and syrupy centres. This liquid chocolate's viscous, creamy texture and warming bitter-sweetness delivered exactly what Ciocchino likes to promise: "pure chocolate pleasure in an espresso-style shot". It also inspired me to consider what else I might mix with melted chocolate. Certainly to be continued...

Coffee (Unlimited)

"Coffee?" I hear you ask, full of doubt. "Since when has a bog-standard cup of ground beans and hot water represented a bloggably Good Drink?" When it costs $2 (£1.20), including unlimited refills from a friendly waiter, and tastes amazing. This one (or three) came from Kerbey Lane Cafe, in Austin, but it might have come from any number of places in the States. I've only ever seen the bottomless coffee cup in London once or twice (including in Borders bookshop, weirdly) and I say it's time Britons started demanding it more often. Right is surely on our side. Until that time a never-ending supply of reasonably priced quality coffee is secured across the capital, perhaps we should strive to support those establishments already doing it the American way.

HELP! Know any places in London offering free coffee refills? Please let me know in the comments!

Wassail

Fifteen Cornwall

On the beach
Watergate Bay
Cornwall
TR8 4AA

Forgive me, but if someone had asked me only a week ago what a “wassail” was I’d have guessed a rare species of bird. Now, thanks to Jamie Oliver’s posh seaside restaurant, Fifteen Cornwall, I am – for the first time – delighting in the wonder of this delicious hot cider drink and saying, unequivocally, this is no bird.

Fifteen’s Cornish Wassail is "Cornish Orchards farmhouse cider mulled with locally pressed apple juices, star anise, clementine and honey". Mine was warming and fruity: not tart, mind, and not too sweet neither. I couldn’t tell you how it was prepared – I was planning to ask Jamie but he was nowhere to be seen, and his youths were probably too occupied overcooking pheasant to help me with my research.

Then again, and this is simply a suggestion, try throwing all of the above into a pot on heat, and see where that gets you.

Forget mulled wine – well, leave it on the back hob a while – and let's all fill our wassailing bowls instead.

Talisker Toddy

Returning home following a hellish hour on London transport, through the snow and slush and oomska, I needed a dose of medicine. Not proper medicine, mind, since I wasn't technically ill, but something to answer the cold in my bones and the mild discombobulation that comes with the passing of daylight on the shortest day of the year.

The remedying powers of hot toddies have long been recognised, and it's not hard to see why liquor and warmth might be preferable to a patient when the alternative is, well, anything else.

A recipe I found here advises leaving your best spirits alone and reaching for a supermarket blend of "gulpin' whisky", since if you're suffering from a terrible cold you're unlikely to appreciate the good stuff anyway. Fair point, but I wasn't sick - I just wanted to feel better, so I turned instead to my bottle of Talisker and decided that if this smoky, spicy single malt couldn't perk me up then maybe I was less well than I suspected.

The prescription:

60ml (2oz) Talisker 10-year-old
60ml (2oz) boiling water
Half a teaspoon of honey
Dash of lemon or lime juice

Pour the whisky into a tumbler and stir in the honey. Add the boiling water and stir some more. Add a little citrus juice and stir again. Place glass in the microwave for a few seconds until the potion is piping hot. Drink before it gets cold.

Introducing the Talisker Toddy: short, smooth, sweet, smoky, and deeply warming. In other words, just what the doctor should order. And if he doesn't, find another doctor.

Gingerbread Latte

My long-standing semi-boycott of Starbucks, confused somewhat by the coffee giant's recent conversion to Fairtrade, is always most tested at winter time, when its selection of festive coffees hits the stands. Waiting for a train at Victoria station last weekend I succumbed to a Gingerbread Latte. It was full of those special seasonal spices - cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, ginger - that make you feel Christmassy inside. No matter, this time, that those same spices were delivered by a few squirts of industrially-produced sugary syrup: mine tasted just fine. I went for a medium/"grande" (skimmed milk, no whipped cream), which cost a ridiculous £3.20 - another reason why my Starbucks fix comes but once a year.

Sainsbury's Mulled Wine

Whether it's getting cold outside, or you just need something to take your mind off bad singing, mulled wine "has your back", as they say in America. I realise I should probably be mulling my own, but having spotted Sainsbury's Mulled Wine in their posher Taste the Difference range for just 3.99 it seemed sensible to try it pre-mulled and ready to go. The label on the back describes this bottle as "a rich and warming combination of silky smooth Spanish Tempranillo and spicy Shiraz mulled with orange peel, cinnamon, cloves and vanilla", which is a better summary than I could muster. We left out the suggested addition of French brandy, since our party still had some walking to do, but it wasn't necessarily missed. After a couple of minutes on the hob, and garnished with a slice of orange, it went down a treat. I'll be striving to share a few more bottles of this winter warmer before the holiday is out.

Mulled Wine

My first mulled wine of the year, bought in Berkhamsted of all places, where everyone and their children were out to watch the switching-on of Christmas lights. One and a half British pounds got me a paper cup of hot vin rouge spiked with clove and cinnamon and... was that orange? It may have benefited from a slug of brandy, but I'm not complaining. If anything was going to make the local choir tolerable in the chilly air it was cheap, warming wine. We left before the lights came on, but we got what we needed.