Vegan Orange Hot Chocolate

It's raining outside!

Oh we are truly getting to the heart of winter over here in Perth, Australia. I've got my fluffy socks on and the heater going.

As you may know, I've been doing lots of experimenting with hot chocolate recipes over the last week or so. I've decided to continue this after finding a recipe for Vegan Orange Chocolate Latte in a cookbook that I borrowed out from the library today. I actually borrowed out 4 vegan cookbooks today. Sorry to all you vegans out there in the Perth region who can't borrow out a book because it's already on loan.

I'm not a big coffee drinker, so instead of making that particular recipe, I decided to Google some other orange hot chocolate recipes. I came across a nice and easy recipe on the blog site Knitted Bliss. I was so pleased to find this recipe was actually one of a series of hot chocolate recipes titled "The Seven Days of Hot Chocolate". Seven totally scrumptious hot chocolate recipes just waiting to be made and guzzled down. 

There is a delicious White Chocolate and Strawberry hot chocolate recipe that I really want to make. Stay tuned. My vegan version will be up soon enough :)

I was surprised at how much I liked this orange hot chocolate. I didn't think that citrus and milk combination would work, but the addition of the orange zest was so lovely. The citrus flavour was subtle and it really complimented the cocoa. I really enjoy dark chocolate so I added extra 99% Lindt dark chocolate. Perfect. There was the strong earthy bitterness from the chocolate, the sweetness from the vanilla soy milk and that hint of fruitiness from the orange.

I am officially addicted to hot chocolate. 

Vegan Orange Hot Chocolate

Serves 1

Ingredients

• 1 cup vanilla soy milk (I ended up using a bit more than 1 cup because I used a super big mug)
• 2 teaspoons dutch-processed cocoa powder (or any cocoa powder will do. But using a few blocks of dark chocolate will probably make your drink more velvety)
• 1/4 cloves (or any other spices like cinnamon)
• 1 tablespoon grated orange zest (or if you don't like bits of zest floating around, you can put a few big peels in so that you can scoop it out later)

Directions

1. Heat the soy milk together with the cocoa and cloves. 
2. Add the orange zest.
3. Pour into mug and stir in extra blocks of chocolate if you like.