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Festive Hot Chocolates and Indulgent Inspirations
Christmas In a Mug: The Festive Tradition of Hot Chocolates
Curling up by an open fire, encased in a heavy-duty blanket, clasping a warm mug of hot chocolate topped with cream and marshmallows. It’s a picture perfect scene of seasonal cosiness, and while you may see it in films and on TV, these days, this experience isn’t just limited to the confines of your own home.
by Michael Rodber
06 October 2023
In the era of pop-up Christmas markets and shopping in person for pleasure, serving hot chocolate drinks could be the very thing to get customers out of the cold and in through the door of your chocolate shop, café, patisserie, or bakery. Now, more than ever, customers are seeking a fulfilling, personal, and unique experience when they hit the high street; it’s the one thing shopping online simply cannot provide. If you currently run one of the aforementioned businesses, we’re sure that you understand the importance of the customer experience, especially with products like cakes and confectionary, that entice the eyes, nose, and mouth. So, what better pairing than a luxurious cup of hot chocolate to top-off their visit to your store?
With customers showing up in their masses for releases from the likes of Starbucks, Costa, and Caffé Nero’s seasonal roster of flavoured coffee, tea, and the odd chocolate-based drink, as well as statistics from Callebaut suggesting “over 70% of consumers like to find genuine chocolate drinks on the menu”, it isn’t too far a stretch of the imagination to see how you could implement hot chocolates in your own business. Now, if only there were a product that would provide a rich, authentic chocolate taste, with the scope to add custom flavours to create unique, Christmassy drinks… Wouldn’t that be a treat?
Enter, Van Houten
Van Houten’s range of chocolate drink powders, unlike other brands, are made from real ground chocolate (as opposed to just cocoa powder), and are available in Dark, White, Gold, Ruby, ‘Passion’, and Milk Chocolate varieties from Keylink. After all, the demand for mix and match combinations of flavours when it comes to hot drinks is higher than ever, so having a variety of chocolate powders gives you the scope to create and replicate those classic Christmas combinations, as well as provide a perfect base for decoration. And in this article, we’ll tell you how you can create chocolate concoctions, how you can decorate them, and how you can use these powders to boost your sales even higher over the festive period and beyond!
Before we go any further however, let’s quell any concerns about setting up costs and equipment, particularly if your business doesn’t usually cater for the beveragely inclined. In it’s most basic form, the Van Houten ground chocolate can be simply stirred into hot milk – meaning at minimum, all you need to provide is the disposable cups (or drinking apparatus of your choosing), the milk or dairy-free alternative, and a microwave to let customers indulge in hot chocolate delights.
Better yet, it takes very minimal investment to take your hot-chocolatiering to the next level. With the addition of a slow cooker or soup kettle, the hot milk, or even a whole batch of hot chocolate, can be stored at temperature and ready to go at a moments notice. A 3.5l slow cooker can be bought for as little as £22 (via Argos, at time of writing), with a leap to 6.5l being only £33, and a larger 10l soup kettle being around the £50 mark. For that extra velvety hot chocolate effect, you could invest in a milk frother for a more premium product. These range from a hand-operated machine (around £10) to large, automated ones (£100), and could very well be considered an early Christmas gift to yourself and your business!
The Flavour of the Week
Now that set-up factors are out of the way, it’s time to talk flavourings. While the chocolate powders alone are perfect and packed full of rich flavour notes in their own right, they can be tailored to suite the season, event, or simply just to add variety to your menu! Considering it is the festive period, there’s ample yuletide sensations to draw from that you can infuse into your hot chocolate offerings.
When you think of Christmas, what flavours come to mind? Chocolate orange? There’s an ingredient for that. Mint chocolates? Ingredient for that. Caramel and hazelnut? We’ve got it.
Flavour drops, topping sauces, and even ambient purees are all simple solutions to add that kick of cinnamon, mulling spice, notes of gingerbread, and all things nice! For large batches of one flavour, Spice Drops can be added directly to the holding tank of hot chocolate. Just one drop goes a long way with this product – so be sure to make a couple of test batches to find your desired amount! If you’re looking to play host to several flavours of hot chocolate on your menu, you might want to add your flavours to each individual serving in the cup, using the topping sauces or purees to create your concoction.
It is Christmas after all, and for many, it wouldn’t be Christmas without the odd tipple here and there. Bailey’s and hot chocolate is a classic when it comes to hot alcoholic beverages, but some other more hidden gems include Cointreau in a dark hot chocolate, with the addition of orange flavour drops, Amaretto with almonds in a white hot chocolate, or even Kirsch with cherry flavouring in a dark hot chocolate for a Black Forest gateau effect – the possibilities are endless!
Top of the Chocs at Christmas
Put the ‘present’ in presentation this Christmas with your hot chocolate toppings! Much like flavourings, there’s plenty of combinations and ingredients to use – all of which can be used in your chocolate or patisserie work. Of course, the base decoration for a hot chocolate is classically whipped cream, marshmallows, or a mixture of both. With cream as a base, you can add ingredients that compliment or represent the flavours in the hot chocolate, such as slices of candied orange (or just the peel!) in an orange flavoured hot chocolate, Griottines on a ‘gateau’-esque one, or cinnamon and apple sundae topping sauce on an “apple pie” flavoured cuppa’ cacao.
Or, if you’re looking to add a little more novelty, there are ample Christmas creations for you to consider. Top your choc with a snowman’s face with a chocolate pencil for a nose and Callebaut Sensations for the eyes and mouth, or better still, a full snowman made from marshmallows on a cocktail stick adds an additional layer of interest, texture, and flavour. At Keylink, we have plenty of inclusions and decorations that you might already have around the kitchen that you can use in your hot chocolates, including Christmas plaques, Crispearls, chocolate shavings, fruit crunches, honeycomb and more.
Recipe Round Up
Tying all of the above together, here’s a list of our top ingredients and decoration combinations that you can use when serving up your hot chocolates:
Chocolate Orange: Dark Chocolate Van Houten Powder, Orange Spice Drops, Cointreau (optional). Topped with whipped cream, candied orange slice, cocoa powder
Gingerbread: Milk Chocolate Van Houten Powder, cinnamon flavour drops, ginger flavour drops. Topped with whipped cream, candied ginger strips, or mini gingerbread biscuit pieces, if you make them!
Caramel and nut crunch: Gold Chocolate Van Houten Chocolate Powder, hazelnut topping sauce. Topped with: whipped cream, caramel topping sauce, nibbed hazelnut or ground pecan nuts, caramel blossoms
Mint Choc: Van Houten Dark Chocolate Powder, mint flavour drops. Topped with: whipped cream, dark chocolate Crispearls, crystallised mint leaves
These are just a few inspirational ideas to get you started on a new and easy way to generate even more business throughout the Christmas and winter period, as well as boost your customers’ in-store experience. The Van Houten powders also make great point-of-sale items for customers to take home and try for themselves, or can be sold in a hamper alongside topping ingredients and your signature chocolates. Better yet, these flavour and decor combinations can be used all year round; simply add ice to create a refreshing chocolate beverage for a hot summer’s day!
We love to see your creations, whether it’s hot chocolates, patisserie, bon-bons or bars – so share them with us on our socials below!
Michael is a Marketing Executive with a penchant for punk rock, cheese, and indoor bouldering.
His favourite chocolate is Valrhona Tanariva.
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