Gallery 24: Enjoy Rich, Mexican Hot Chocolate From Oaxaca

Enjoy a traditional Mexican treat with genuine La Soledad and Mayordomo chocolate - Drink it hot or cold!

If you have traveled to Oaxaca, you know that drinking hot chocolate is embedded in the culture. Walk past the cafes in the zocalo, morning or evening, and see the locals sipping from cups brimming with fragrant hot chocolate. Stroll down Calle Mina, where the two major roasters and grinders are located (Mayordomo and La Soledad chocolateras) and you will be enveloped by the sweet fragrance of grinders processing cacao beans.

A Oaxacan hot (or cold) chocolate drink is different from what we have here in the States. There, they grind cacao beans together with sugar and/or cinnamon, almonds, and vanilla, then press the paste into solid bars. You melt the bars in hot milk to produce a beverage with a rich, complex taste. The traditional way of blending the milk and melted chocolate is with a molinillo. The wooden mixing tool has a long handle with a perforated bulb and loose rings at the bottom. Hold it between your two palms, rub your hands together, and the tool spins, mixing and frothing the chocolate.

This authentic, Oaxacan chocolate is very hard to find in the U. S. Here you can try several varieties of two different brands. You can eat them like candy, but they are really meant to be melted on the stove in hot milk or water. Note the differences in ingredientsamong the various boxes. For La Soledad, the brown box is best seller -- a compilation of chocolate, sugar, cinnamon and almonds. The yellow box drops cinnamon, but adds vanilla. The orange box is only chocolate, sugar and cinnamon. The blue box is moka -- chocolate, coffee, sugar and vanilla.

The Mayordomo brand has their "classico" blend, with sugar, cacao beans and cinnamon, but they also offer three more expensive blends with a higher content of cacao. On the inside page for each box, you will see nutrition information. Note that the deluxe Mayordomo brands have more protein and less carbohydrates per portion.

The 250 gram boxes make about 1.5 liters of chocolate drink.