In the Kitchen With Charity: How Benjamin Reyes makes the hot chocolate at Stars

Benjamin Reyes grew up in Puebla, Mexico, and has been drinking the best hot chocolate since he was a baby.

“My mother told me that I didn’t like milk from her breast, so I always had hot chocolate,” he said. “It was like mother’s milk to me.”

Mr. Reyes makes his family recipe at Stars Café in the Heights. It’s truly a treat worthy of Valentine’s Day, made with love and chocolate.

The people of the Americas have been drinking their chocolate since the Aztecs used cacao for medicinal and religious purposes. In the beginning, hot chocolate was not sweet. It was a bitter, bracing beverage, more akin to strong black coffee, than a latte with two sugars.

In the 19th Century, North Americans started to make hot chocolate inspired by Mexican ways. In her 1845 cookbook, Eliza Acton instructed readers to make it European style with water and serve it with ladies’ fingers (the cookies, not the appendages.)

In Mr. Reyes’ family, they make their own cocoa powder from the cacao pods they grow, roast and grind. Fruity and fragrant, it’s not as bland as the cocoa blends in most U.S. grocery stores. “This is completely different,” said Mr. Reyes, offering me a spoonful of powder to taste. “It smells nice. They make this from cacao, 100% cacao.”

If you lack a grandmother in Puebla to keep you supplied, a reasonable substitute for cacao that is roasted and ground at home is 100% cocoa powder from Ghirardelli or Droste. Hot chocolate purists sometime avoid Dutch Process cocoa because it means the cocoa is less bitter, but also less flavorful, and you want your amour to sit up and pay attention to this beverage of love. 

Mr. Reyes’s family also makes the chocolate, which is the second important ingredient in hot chocolate, giving it body, color, flavor and sweetness as it melts into the milk. Again, if you don’t have a source for homemade chocolate, Nestle’s Abuelita brand chocolate tablets are very good, and available at the I.G.A.

Traditional Mexican hot chocolate is stirred with a wooden implement that has loose rings carved into it, called a molinillo, but a standard kitchen whisk works well also. Don’t overheat the milk. It should not boil, but it should come close. You could use a double boiler to be sure. And don’t hesitate to add a little more sugar after tasting.

Mr. Reyes summed it up: “I love sweet things.”  

Valentine’s Day Hot Chocolate

2 servings

2 cups whole milk, cream or a combination of both

2 tablespoons cacao (cocoa) powder, unsweetened

½ tablet of Nestle’s Abuelita sweet chocolate or 2 oz. sweetened chocolate. (Best if sourced from your grandmother in Puebla.)

Pinch of salt

1. Heat milk to just under a boil.  The fool-proof method is to boil water in the bottom pan of a double-boiler which will heat the milk in the top pan to the temperature at which water boils — 212 degrees F — and no higher.

2. While the milk is heating, whisk in the cacao powder.

3. When the milk is hot, add the chocolate, and salt, and agitate the mixture with a whisk, or molinillo until the chocolate is completely melted and incorporated, and there is some foam. 

4. If you really like it sweet, add a couple of teaspoons of sugar or put a marshmallow in each cup and pour the hot chocolate over it to serve.