I really like hot chocolate and cocoa, now that the weather here in the northeast has started to turn chilly I'm ready to make myself a huge steaming cup for a mid-day pick me up. I've tried all the regular powders and syrups like Swiss Miss and Hershey's and find them lacking in real flavor. Slashfood has covered some of the premium hot chocolates before and written up Real Simples best picks. I've even tried some of the high end mixes like Jacques Torres Wicked Hot Chocolate which is quite good, but at around $18 for 8 servings it's more than I like to pay, especially since my large antique cocoa mug holds three servings.

My hot chocolates of choice are the myriad of excellent and affordable Latin American products. They aren't powders or syrups but instead specially made blocks of melting chocolate with a hint of salt and sugar crystals and spices like cinnamon. They don't taste too great eaten out of hand, but when you melt them in hot milk or water they are superb. Try them both ways for a completely different experience. I heat up the milk or water and drop the chocolate into the blender and add the liquid, then blend until mixed and foamy. I also like to make them Mexican style with the addition of a dash of cayenne and maybe some Penzy's real Ceylon or Vietnamese cinnamon. (The cinnamon sold in the US is in actuality Cassia, a similar spice but with a slightly different taste than true cinnamon.) More after the jump.

There seem to be two main styles to these Latin cocoas. The first is a full bodied, rich, and creamy milk chocolate style which is my personal epitome of what cocoa should be. The other is a darker and much less sweet style, more for those who like dark chocolate or a darker roast of coffee. It has some of that bitterness and toasted quality of a good espresso, but milder and creamier. You can also get whole seeds, called cocoa nibs if you want to try your hand at making cocoa from scratch.

Milk chocolate style:

• Abuelita, $2.50-$4.00, 19oz, 6 tablets per package, made in Mexico.
  This is a nice and full
• Ibarra, $2.50-$4.00, 18.6oz, 6 tablets, made in Mexico.
• Embajador, $2.25, 9.17oz, 10 tablets, made in Dominican Republic.

Darker chocolate style:

• Iberia, $3.50, 8.8oz, large bar with 8 sections, made in Columbia. (This one had an extraordinarily high caffeine content...whew!)
• "Antonio Pueo" Rollos, $2.95, 7.04oz, 8 tablets, made in the Philippines.
• Natural whole Cacao seeds from El Salvador. The package says: "Just toast and peel the seeds. Add sugar to taste. Grind and add to boiled water with milk", $3.25, 8oz.

As for the nibs ... I tried steeping like coffee, boiling the grinds in water, simmering the grinds in milk, etc. I tried roasting them dark, roasting them lightly, and no roast at all since they seemed roasted enough already, but no matter how I tried it was to no avail. All I ended up with was flavorless gunk.