My Favourite Chocolate Drink

I’m a very chocolatey person and so when I moved to live near Granada I soon discovered a whole world of chocolate treats. After all, the Spanish love chocolate and so I found myself with a whole range of wonderful foods to taste and enjoy.

But my favourite chocolate treat of all is Cola Cao, a Spanish powdered chocolate which is drunk mixed with milk.

It can be drunk hot. Or cold.

My favourite way is hot – very hot. And there is something special about how it is mixed and drunk which I am going to share with you.

I have a tub of the powdered drink at home, and so I can have a drink whenever the fancy takes me, but I much prefer to enjoy it at a café. This is where my “Cola Cao caliente” (Hot Cola Cao) will be served in a glass with a sachet of the chocolate powder balanced across the top.

This method of presentation urges the customer to mix the drink quickly because if it is left for any length of time the sachet starts to get wet with condensation.

Ceremoniously, the sachet is torn open, the chocolate powder is spilled onto the milk. And then it is stirred. But not too briskly. Because you don’t want all of the chocolate lumps to dissolve.

Actually, as anyone who has tried to make a drink of Cola Cao like this will know, the drink invariably contains lumps which don’t want to dissolve. But to my mind, this only goes to improve the whole drinking experience because chewing the chocolatey, undissolved lumps give the drink an extra dimension.

Cola Cao was first introduced in the 1940′s and it is still manufactured in the same way, more or less, as it was made all those years ago.

I think it’s great to know that you can go into a café today and enjoy the same chocolatey taste that has been enjoyed for all those years.

But here’s the secret to my chocolate heaven. If ever you are in one of the main cities of Spain (Granada included – because that is where I live) go into the café at one of the El Corté Ingles Department stores. There is a chain of them throughout Spain.

Why go there?

Because El Cortés serve the Cola Cao with a free “Chocolatina” (a small, piece of dark chocolate wrapped in gold paper). This magnifies the taste of the chocolate drink and can send the typical chocoholic into a state of deep contentment.

Sometimes I can imagine that I was born with a Spanish “sweet tooth”. This drink is one of the genuine chocolatey treats of Spain that I really can’t get too much of.