Champurrado-Style Hot Chocolate
Hot chocolate sweetened with Mexican piloncillo sugar and infused with Ceylon cinnamon. This recipe was created to evoke the flavors of the Mexican chocolate atole called champurrado. See the Notes section at the bottom for details on the ingredients, possible substitutions and boozy additions.
(To make classic Mexican-style hot chocolate, use this recipe or this recipe instead.)
Makes 1 quart
Ingredients
Champurrado-Style Hot Chocolate made in the Adventure Kitchen, with grated piloncillo (bottom) and Ceylon cinnamon sticks (on the right).
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (preferably Dutch process)
1/4 cup white sugar
1/8 teaspoon coarse salt (or half this amount if using table salt)
1.5 ounces piloncillo (see notes)
1 quart whole milk
1/2 ounce good-quality Ceylon cinnamon sticks (see notes)
Optional: Whipped cream and Mexican Sweet Blend or extra piloncillo and ground cinnamon for garnish (see notes)
Instructions
1. Whisk the cocoa powder, white sugar and salt together in a medium saucepan. Grate or chop the piloncillo and whisk it into the pan with the other ingredients. Add 1/4 cup of cold water and whisk to blend everything together. Turn heat to medium, and bring to a simmer. Simmer for about 1 minute stirring constantly.
2. Whisk the milk into the chocolate mixture and raise the heat to medium high. Add the cinnamon and whisk occasionally until the hot chocolate is piping hot and the piloncillo has fully melted into the chocolate, about 10-15 minutes. Don’t let it boil. Keep the pan partially covered whenever you’re not stirring, to prevent a skin from forming.
Freshly-grated piloncillo in the Adventure Kitchen. Piloncillo comes in a cone shape, and it’s almost as hard as a rock. To use it, you can either use a cheese grater to grate the amount you need from the cone, or break off chunks using a meat cleaver. This recipe calls for 1.5 ounces, which is about 2 tablespoons of grated piloncillo, firmly pressed into your measuring spoon.
3. When the chocolate is piping hot (you see lots of steam and you have to blow on it when you taste it), remove from heat and serve.
These are Ceylon cinnamon sticks photographed in the Adventure Kitchen. This is the type of cinnamon commonly used in Mexico, where they call it canela. Ceylon cinnamon has a different flavor than the cassia cinnamon most of us grew up with in the US. If you can’t find it, you can substitute cassia cinnamon sticks, but they won’t have the same classic Mexican flavor.
Notes:
I created this recipe for Christmas 2018. We debuted it at our town’s Christmas Tree Lighting event, which was taking place just across the street from our holiday pop-up shop. We wheeled a cart outside with this hot chocolate and some mulled apple cider for sale during the event. Everyone LOVED it, and we sold out immediately. And the next day, people came into the shop pleading with us to sell them the spices we used to make it.
The drink is sweetened with a combination of Mexican piloncillo and white sugar. Piloncillo is unrefined cane juice that’s been poured into a cone-shaped mold to harden. Because it’s unrefined, it’s got a more complex flavor than white sugar. The flavor is vaguely rum-like, slightly fruity with a hint of something like smokiness.
Unlike the standard American brown sugar (which is just white sugar doctored up with molasses), piloncillo comes by its brown color honestly. It’s simply made from the rough cane juice derived directly from the sugar cane plant.
A cone of piloncillo can be about as hard as a rock. To cook with it, you either grate the desired amount with a cheese grater, or whack off a chunk with a meat cleaver.
The cinnamon I used for this is Ceylon cinnamon (shown in the picture). It’s different from the cassia cinnamon we all grew up with in the US. It’s papery, and breaks easily in your hands, and has a hint of spiciness to it. If you’re familiar with the candy Red Hots or Hot Tamales, the “hot” part is Ceylon cinnamon.
I called this recipe “Champurrado-style” because the combination of piloncillo and Ceylon cinnamon in a chocolate drink evoke notions champurrado, a chocolate atole in Mexico.
I often drink this with a splash of bourbon in the bottom of the mug. Really tasty.
This is one of those recipes where distinctive ingredients really give it its flavor, so if you can get your hands on actual piloncillo and Ceylon cinnamon, you’ll be glad you did (you can get them from our shop, see links below). If you don’t have them, you can substitute turbinado sugar and cassia cinnamon sticks, though the flavor will of course be different.
We sprinkled Mexican Sweet Blend on top of the whipped cream - which is a spoonable combination of piloncillo and Ceylon cinnamon that we sell at the shop. If you don’t have the blend, you can make your own by combining a pinch of good Ceylon cinnamon with a couple tablespoons of grated and pressed-down piloncillo.
If you happen to have a jar of our Mexican Sweet Blend on hand but not the piloncillo and cinnamon by themselves, you can head to this page for complete instructions to make your hot chocolate with that instead. (And while you’re there, subscribe to our 101 Ways to Use Mexican Sweet Blend series to get more ideas in your inbox as they are published. Fun!)