- That's good. This is really good. - Not too hot, extra chocolate. Shaken, not stirred. - [Babish] Hey, what's up guys. Welcome back to Binging with Babish, where this week, we're taking a look at the hot cocoa from The Santa Clause a recipe 1200 years in the making. So the least that I can do is
spend a long weekend on it. So here I have a collection of different types of
chocolate and cocoa powders, both of which we're going to utilize in making our hot cocoa. Technically it's not hot cocoa if there's chocolate solids in it, but this is what's going to
make it extra chocolatey, and velvety and rich, but our bread and butter is
going to be the cocoa powder. This is where it really pays off to mix and match your flavors. I've got three different
kinds of cocoa powder here. Some are earthy and woody and
some are light and fruity. Before we make our master
blend of these chocolates, we first have to come up with
the best way to integrate them into the beverage, and our kitchen producer Kendell, taught me an amazing trick, where we add a couple
tablespoons of heavy cream directly to our cocoa powders
and sugars, making a paste. This prevents the dreaded
cocoa powder lumps and is how you should
prepare your hot cocoa from now until the end of time. Next up, we gotta to talk liquids, and generally I like
to go with a 50-50 mix of milk and heavy cream. I've got one cup of each year
that I'm going to combine in a medium saucepan and
over medium-low heat. Bring it to not quite a simmer. Not only did Judy say that
the hot cocoa was not too hot, but bringing milk to a boil can scald it, changing its consistency and flavor. Once we've reached about
190 degrees Fahrenheit, we're going to kill the heat and add four ounces of
bittersweet chocolate and our cocoa paste, which
is three tablespoons each, cocoa powder and sugar. Tiny whisk together with a
tablespoon or two of cream. Tiny whisk thoroughly until everybody is melted and homogenous, season with a bit of kosher salt, and optionally you can
add a teaspoon each, vanilla extract and
instant espresso powder, both of which will serve to
enhance our chocolate flavor. Once everybody's mixed in, all
there is left to do is serve and enjoy this rich decadent mug of American style, hot chocolate, and don't get me wrong, this is very, very, very good, but it's not, "I worked on
it for 1200 years good." So I decided to explore some other methods for making hot chocolate as
rich and decadent as possible. Starting with the French, we're combining the same one cup each heavy cream and whole milk, then we're adding a tablespoon of sugar and a whopping eight
ounces of dark chocolate. Killing the heat and stirring until everybody's melted and emulsified, which is going to result in
an incredibly rich, thick deeply chocolatey hot chocolate, which of course we're going to season with a little pinch of kosher salt, before ladling into a much
more reasonably portioned mug, because this stuff kind
of feels like drinking just a cup of melted chocolate, which you're definitely not
going to hear me complain about but it's not what I
imagined when I was a kid, when I would watch The
Santa Clause so much that I broke the VHS. Now really just for shoots and giggles I'm going to try the Italian
method for hot chocolate, which in addition to the three tablespoons each sugar and cocoa powder, contains one tablespoon of
corn starch in the dry mix. This we're going to add directly into steaming milk and heavy cream, with the heat on low this time, because we need the
corn starch to be cooked for a couple of minutes. This plus four ounces of dark chocolate, is going to make a devastatingly thick, almost pudding like hot chocolate, and that's because that's what it is. It's pretty much pudding. You could absolutely eat
the stuff with a spoon. You could put it in the fridge and it would set up just
like chocolate pudding, and drinking it hot out of
a cup is suffice to say, a bizarre experience. Whoa, I don't think so Tim, but there's one more ultra
rich method I want to try. This one hailing from Vienna. This time we're whisking together our three tablespoons of
sugar with two egg yolks, setting that aside while
we dump eight ounces of dark chocolate into our one cup each milk and heavy cream, melting that completely over low heat, and then we're kind of going
to make a creme patissiere, bringing stuff back over to the eggs and then slowly ladling the
hot mixture into the eggs while whisking constantly,
which is going to temper them and prevent them from scrambling when we add them back to the pot, which we're going to
cook over medium-low heat for one to two minutes, until we just start to
see a little bubbleage, and there you have it, a Viennese style hot chocolate. Ultra thick and chocolatey, with an added layer of
richness from egg yolks. Again, a fun experiment,
but not Judy's hot cocoa. The answer there I think, lies in her James Bond joke, shaken, not stirred. So for our ultimate hot cocoa, we're combining three tablespoons of sugar with two tablespoons each of Valrhona and Ghirardelli cocoa powder, a little pinch of instant espresso powder and a pinch of salt. Tiny whisk until homogenous, and then it's time to grab our shaker. An insulated thermos
with a double screw seal. Before we go any further, I must tell you that this is dangerous. Shaking, hot liquids
causes gases to expand, which could explode and burn
your precious, precious skin. So I must advise you
not to try this at home. So in addition to the
cocoa powder and sugars, I'm going to add two and a half ounces of caliber, dark chocolate wafers and through a funnel I'm going to pour in my steaming milk and cream. Then I'm going to seal this guy up tight, with both its screw top lids and give it a gentle shake, just enough to melt the chocolate, dissolve the cocoa and sugars, and I hope to aerate the
heavy cream a little bit, which is going to make it nice and thick. Very carefully unscrew the top to slowly release the pressure, and then there's only one
way to serve this hot cocoa, in a replica of the actual mug
from The Santa Clause film. It's made of Sterling silver, it costed $200 and I'm going
to be drinking all my beverages out of it from now on, but how is this particular beverage? Well, got to say, I think we did our job. It's richer and thicker
than American hot cocoa, but not as overwhelming
as the earlier iterations. It is not too hot, it is extra chocolatey and it was shaken, not stirred. Happy holidays guys. (upbeat music)
