Whole Egg Chocolate
The hot cocoa in my life had never been acceptable. It was always too thin and runny. Too much like liquid, and I didn’t want liquid. I wanted a dense chocolate cloud in which to lose my sense of direction. To my great joy and greater girth, I finally solved the mystery of how to manifest this vision into reality. My thick hot chocolate is everything I yearned for.
The body of this drinkable soufflé comes from whole eggs. I start by following the
He stared at his hot chocolate like it held the secret to the universe
— Lilith Saintcrow
Blood is really warm It’s like drinking hot chocolate but with more screaming
— Ryan Mecum
example of the Viennese, who famously add egg yolk to their cocoa to create a decadently smooth, glossy brown emulsion. But unlike the Austrians I don’t neglect the whites. Rather, I beat them stiff and then whisk the stiff whites into my cocoa.
Unlike whipped cream and other culinary foams, stiff whites won’t dissolve in heat. Their enduring density comes from the egg white proteins, aligned by the action of the whisk into fiber-like structures that persist in the chocolatey brew. The egg whites make the cocoa so thick and so puffy it’s like drinking a chocolate cloud as the chocolate cloud drinks you.
On New Years Eve, doctor the drinking chocolate with Kahlua. The following morning — New Years Day — add some of this puffy cocoa foam to a cup of coffee, where it will float like professionally steamed milk. Without mixing with the coffee, the cocoa will still manage to hitch a ride in each sip. As a pair of stimulants, coffee and chocolate act greater than the sum of the parts, because the theobromine in chocolate and caffeine in coffee are mutually enhancing, as you stare piercingly into the blank canvas that is the year to come.
When hot cocoa can be simultaneously so thick and so silky, anything is possible. So be firm with your principles, flexible with your expectations, and perfect with your hot cocoa, and you will crush 2022.