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Hot Cocoa vs. Hot Chocolate: Is There a Difference?

The colder it gets, the more my attention drifts toward hot beverages—not a want but a need for my icy-cold fingers. Bring on the morning cuppa, the afternoon tea, the nighttime kafi luz. I’m a sucker for anything seasonal, so I’m saying yes to the endless hot cocoa and hot chocolate pop-ups lining the streets as the year draws to a close. I sip their wares from paper cups, rims festooned with a candy cane, at the tree lot, the ice skating rink, the hometown grand illumination. This is my Hallmark moment, and I’ll do what I want!

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  How to make perfect hot chocolate

Fight the powder: when only a genuine, honest-to-god silky smooth hot chocolate will do, you don't want to make a horlicks of it

 Your favorite winter drink may weaken bones and pack more sugar than a candy bar

’Tis the season for holiday comfort foods and drinks — but this winter, experts warn that one cozy beverage may be doing more damage to your bones than many revelers realize. Sugary hot chocolate, while often made with milk, can actually weaken the bones because of its high sugar content, orthopedic surgeons say.

Articles of Interest

Tini’s Hot Chocolate Recipe

The only real way to make hot chocolate is from scratch. It’s thick, it’s creamy, it’s full of chocolate-y goodness and after you top it with a dollop of softly whipped cream, all your worries will melt away.

A food scientist breaks down the thermodynamics between marshmallows and hot chocolate

Hot chocolate is simply incomplete without marshmallows. As the plump white globs melt to form a puffy blanket, it’s easy to take for granted the molecular phenomena occurring inside as you sip on the delicious beverage. A key component to the tasty treat is its temperature: too hot and it burns your tongue, too lukewarm and it loses its cozy feel. A worthwhile scientific inquiry then is whether the marshmallows act as a cooling agent or, rather, keep the hot chocolate hot.

Afternoon Snack: Hot Cocoa--the New Fitness Drink?

I swear there is something medicinal about hot chocolate (or hot cocoa, whatever you call it in your house). Maybe it reminds us of happier times--when we were young and less stressed out. But other than feel-good vibes, you wouldn't expect hot cocoa to have any real health benefits, right? Then I heard about this...

Alice Medrich Shares Her Tips for Making the Best Hot Chocolate

Savoring a cup of the good stuff on a chilly autumn night can be a decadent experience, and although it may come as no surprise, making your best hot chocolate depends on a few factors. Whether you use water, milk, or a combination of both, the ingredients you choose will be the determining factors that can result in either luscious or lackluster. So we turned to Alice Medrich—a renowned author, pastry chef, teacher, and chocolate expert—for some tips on the preparing the perfect cup.

Anatomy of a hot chocolate

Hot chocolate is the ultimate winter beverage. It’s creamy, decadent and versatile. Drink it plain or spice it up with some chili powder, orange, or peppermint and you’ll surely find a style that will leave you positively foaming at the mouth.

Can You Fight Inflammation by Drinking Hot Chocolate?

If you can’t find a dark drinking chocolate brand that has the essential no-alkali credentials, not to worry. It’s not terribly complicated to concoct your own dark chocolate drink right at home. The basic technique is to melt dark chocolate bars and add water, cow’s milk, or plant-based milks, such as oat or almond milk, to taste. “A double boiler will help you not burn it, which affects the flavor,” Sandon says.

Finally, a Taste of Hot Chocolate

During Mozart's time, hot chocolate was a drink only for the aristocracy. In his opera Cosi Fan Tutte, Despina, the maid, is incensed by the fact that she has never tasted the hot chocolate she must painstakingly prepare for her ladies. She stages a silent protest and decides to take a drink at last.

George Washington drank hot chocolate…

but, so did everyone else. Turns out, hot chocolate was a pretty common beverage in colonial America—before and after the Revolution. Who knew? Of course, we all know the colonists had a vested interest in tea, after all, the Boston Tea Party was no minor incident. But what else did the colonists drink?

Heavy metal drink: Your favorite hot chocolate mix could contain high amounts of lead

Before you cozy up on the couch with a mug of your favorite hot chocolate, you might want to consider Consumer Report’s latest list of powder mixes that contain high levels of metal. Last year, Consumer Reports found that many chocolate bars, including Hershey’s, Theo, Trader Joe’s, Hu and Godiva, had dangerous amounts of lead and cadmium.

Hot Chocolate

Let's talks about hot chocolate. My first cups of this drink were always these pre-made packets of powder, sugar, and milk solids that you submerge in hot water. However, as my interest around making this drink increased, I started working on different variations. I began with adding the hot chocolate mixture to black coffee which had an amazing coffee flavor but didn't feel like hot chocolate anymore.

Hot Chocolate Goes Glam

Oh, yeah. In fact, chocolate, you know, if you go back to trace its origins back to the Aztecs where it was first discovered, was only enjoyed in the liquid form. So you know, in its very primitive sense - now, it didn't have any sugar or milk added to it, as we do, but you know, before even solid chocolate candy came along, there was liquid hot chocolate.

How Hot Chocolate Became More American Than Apple Pie

In this frigid month of February, it may be comforting to know that hot chocolate might just be more American than apple pie. George Washington might make that case if he was still around. When he dug into his favorite breakfast of cornmeal hoe cakes with honey and butter, he often washed them down with warm chocolate cream, according to Dining with the Washingtons, a cookbook published in 2011 by the staff at George Washington's Mount Vernon Estate. The book offers updated versions of typical recipes from the period and a glimpse into the first president's favorite foods.

How to spice up your hot chocolate this winter

Sometimes keeping it simple is not always the best idea – especially when it comes to this take on hot chocolate. With its heat from both the spices and the rum, a cup of this will truly warm you through. Use high-quality chocolate to make it extra luxurious and don’t forget the pinch of sea salt – it makes all the difference.

I Tested 6 Popular Recipes for Homemade Hot Cocoa, and the Winner Is Better than Any Boxed Mix

The Dream Hot Cocoa: Jacques Torres’ Legendary Hot Chocolate... This cocoa blew all of the others out of the water. I was suspicious at first of the inclusion of milk powder and cornstarch in the ingredient list, wondering if they were really necessary or the kind of thing that sometimes gets added to a recipe to make it stand out from the crowd. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the addition of these two ingredients to a simple mixture of milk and dark chocolate yielded the best cup of cocoa in the bunch.

Life Who Wants Hot Chocolate? 10 New Ways to Whip Up a Cup

If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably loved hot chocolate as long as you’ve loved things like sledding and snowmen. It’s an instant mood-booster. A cup of cocoa with a massive homemade marshmallow on top is—still, after all these years—pretty much the only way I survived those endless days locked inside during the the polar vortex last year.

Notes on chocolate: a drink to soothe a troubled soul

A difficult day is eased with a bun, nice stationery and a big glass of thick hot chocolate

The Best Homemade Hot Chocolate

Cocoa powder doesn’t have the cocoa butter content that a chocolate bar has, so it’s inherently not as rich and creamy. You just can’t get that luxuriously creamy hot chocolate experience from cocoa powder alone. The chocolaty flavor will be lacking. Other recipes call for cocoa powder, and I intentionally do not do that!

The Controversial Way Dunkin's Hot Chocolate Is Made

Despite Dunkin' using powder and water for its hot chocolate, there are many fans of the festive, wintery drink. According to a handful of alleged employees who took their experiences to Reddit, Dunkin's hot chocolate is a very popular order. Some people like to add a shot of espresso for that extra bit of earthy flavoring (not to mention caffeine), while others like to add caramel swirl for rich, buttery sweetness.

Winter Meltdown: Real Hot Chocolate, Secret No More

For my hot chocolate, I wanted a high-quality bittersweet chocolate -- bittersweet and semisweet are not interchangeable. Semisweet contains more sugar and makes a hot chocolate that is too sweet.

Resources

13 Things You Might Not Know About Hot Chocolate

That sweet, chocolaty treat you enjoy on cold days has a lot of history behind it. It’s been on the frontline of wars, stirred up controversy with the Catholic Church, and seen empires rise and fall. Here are a few tasty morsels about hot chocolate.

17 Surprising Hot Chocolate Recipes You Need This Winter

Winter—or, as we like to call it, hot chocolate season—is nearly in full swing. And boy are we ready for all the cocoa-fueled days to come. The plain ol' dark chocolate, marshmallow-topped, store-bought stuff is totally fine, but we really need some chocolatey gourmet hot bevs to really sate our cravings.

7 Ingenious Hacks to Make Hot Chocolate Even Better

What’s better than a steaming mug of thick, creamy hot chocolate on a chilly day? Not much—except maybe a mug scented with cardamom, cinnamon and other chai spices, or a grown-up version spiked with amaretto and sea salt. Can’t decide? You don’t have to. Take a look at our rich and chocolatey master recipe—plus a few of our favorite hot chocolate “hacks”—all of which are as easy to make as they are indulgent.