Chantico
Related entries in Coffee newsA week ago I took my cousins to Seymour Mountain to play in the snow and afterwards we all felt like drinking something warm so we all decided to go to Starbucks. I saw the big add for their new hot chocolate, Chantico, and decided to give it a try.
It wasn’t a big dissapointment because I wasn’t expecting much from Starbucks but I’m probably not going to get one again. When I ordered it they had just run out but they quicly prepared some more: put some powder in a pitcher of milk and mix it with a spoon, then heat it using steam from the coffee machine. It was almost like they were making the same stuff you can make at home.
Then I saw the little cup they served it in. A paper espresso cup, they promise 180ml of chocolate, but the cup clearly says that it is a 175ml cup. What’s with that? In retrospect, I should be glad it wasn’t more than that, 6oz of the stuff pack 390 calories and 21g of fat.
It didn’t taste bad, but it wasn’t the ultimate chocolate experience. You can make better stuff at home, with less guilt and much less $ per cup. Go get a bar of 70% cocoa chocolate, mix it with very hot milk and add sugar and maybe cinnamon to taste, you’ll see what I mean.
January 17th, 2005 at 9:10 am
I actually thought it tasted worse than your everyday variety cheap brand of cocoa from the grocery store.
It was very chalky. I will admit it had a dark flavour, but it was not a nice texture.
At home, Ianiv and I actually like to make a hot chocolate featuring a dark chocolate from mexico that comes with the cinnamon and sugar dissolved into the discs of chocolate. It’s featured here:
http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/mexicanchocolate.htm
March 22nd, 2005 at 10:44 pm
I tried one tonight… Not bad. A little sweet for my tastes. I thought I’d try to make it at home. The resulting chantico recipe was born: (all measurements are approx)
Homemade Chantico
3/4 cup warm water
3 heaping tbsp Frys Coco Powder
8 heaping tbsp sugar
2 tsp cornstarch + (1 tbsp water)
1 pinch salt
2 tsp butter (optional)
Heat the water to near boiling. Reduce heat to medium. Add the coco and the sugar. Stir with a wisk for about 5 minutes to really disolve the coco powder. In a seperat bowl, add water to cornstarch and mix until completly dissolved. (If you don’t, you’ll get some nasty clumps.) Add the cornstarch mix to the coco/sugar mix and wisk briskly. After a minute or so you *should* have a smooth velvety yummy drink! For more flavour, add the salt and butter.
It will thicken a bit as it cools, so add just a wee bit of hot water to thin it out again.
The result is a very rich dark sweet coco, very similar to $tarbuck$.