Hot mint chocolate

When the temperature in our house drops to 12 C, that means time for hot chocolate. So we biked to the store (it was 6 C!) and got these chocolate bar with 70% cacao content. Deep dark chocolate.

 

 I used 100 g of the chocolate bar and 500 ml of full-fat milk (his daily milk).

 Then, I remembered I have a bag of dried mint leaves, and hey, mint chocolate always sounds great!

Add some dried mint leaves and start heating the milk on low heat.

Occasionally stir the milk to avoid burning the bottom. With the heating, the milk will start turning slightly brown-green due to the mint leaves. Keep simmering for a while and turn off the heat. Let it cool for like 30 minutes. This is also to allow the mint leaves to infuse the milk longer.

When it`s cooled enough, remove the leaves through a strainer and give a squeeze (with your clean hands or spatula) to push down the remaining milk on the strainer. 

Pour back the mint-infused milk to the pot and simmer it again on low heat.
Now, the chocolate. Break the bar into smaller pieces.

Then, throw the pieces in the simmering milk.

Stir and let them melt. Time to taste. Mine was sweet enough (I didn`t need to add sugar at all), but I wanted deeper chocolate taste.

Good thing I have this cacao powder. Beautiful. I added a teaspoonful of it, stirred, tasted,  and I`m happy. So why not using the powder at the first place? Because the bars were a lot cheaper, but then I couldn`t stop my self to buy this fancy powder too. Sometimes I`m just a real spender, everyone.

Oh wait, I have other ingredients to make my hot chocolate more enjoyable. Macadamia nuts.

Chop them in a food processor and sprinkle them on the hot chocolate.

And marshmallow too. Perfectly sweet if you don`t add them too many.
So, here`s what we had for our chilly Sunday:
A cup of hot, sweet, rich, and gooey mint chocolate with light crunchiness of macadamia nuts.

 
Ingredients:
Chocolate bar/powder
Dry mint leaves
Milk
Macadamia nuts, chopped
Marshmallows