Small Win #10: The best hot chocolate in the world

From Saint Lucia, with love

Welcome to Small Wins, a newsletter that shares a small win with you every other week — one that has the power to improve your cooking, your home, your life. If you’ve found your way over here but are not yet subscribed, here, let me help you with that:

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When writing these newsletters, I generally know that pizza is going to outperform ratatouille, and that sharing a foolproof method for cooking rice is going to be more useful in your day-to-day than, say, a post about avocado crema (as much as we love it!). Sometimes, though, even if I know it’s not going to capture as many people, I like to share something that I think is brilliant but also underrated (or not widely known about). And today, that thing is cocoa tea from the Caribbean island of Saint Lucia (which is where my paternal family come from).

I’m sharing cocoa tea with you because I think it’s the best hot chocolate in the world, even though it’s not like any hot chocolate you will have tasted. It’s spiced, and warming, and smooth, but with an underlying deep cocoa flavour from the cocoa stick that you grate into it.

Everyone I’ve ever served this to falls in love with it and yes, to make it you do need to get hold of cocoa sticks (an online purchase) and it does require a bit of effort — but isn’t that true of all the best things in life?

Love,
Alexina

Coming up on Small Wins — 2643 tests later, these are the perfect roast potatoes; why the best cranberry sauce is the simplest; and to kick off 2025: the vinaigrette that all my friends go MAD for

For my Small Wins+ community — Last month it was all about potatoes but tomorrow comes a big one: Chicken 101! How to break down a chicken and why it will save you ££; the only way to treat a chicken breast; the technique you must know to make the best roast chicken — and much more. Become a paid subscriber to get access.

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A SAINT LUCIAN SECRET

Saint Lucian cocoa tea is the best hot chocolate you’ll ever taste — and yet it’s not like any other hot chocolate. First, a spiced stock is made with bay leaves, cinnamon and nutmeg, and then you grate in cocoa stick: a dark, compacted, dry mass of roasted, de-shelled and crushed cocoa beans that delivers pure unadorned bitterness*. Evaporated milk is added to soothe, and sugar to sweeten, until you have the perfect balance. It’s a drink often served at breakfast with fried bakes (a slightly sweetened bread, as in the picture above) and it is the essence of comfort.

Though we often think of hot chocolate as secondary to the chocolate bar, the act of drinking your chocolate rather than eating it is, in many ways, a return to the original form of chocolate. Long before chocolate was a bar, it was a drink. The word cocoa derives from the Aztec word xocatyl, meaning ‘bitter water’, and the Mayans subsequently developed a rich chocolate culture that centered on serving frothing cups of unsweetened cocoa at weddings, births and burials. They believed cocoa was a heavenly food gifted by the serpent deity Kukulkan and they even used dried cocoa beans as currency.

Though I can’t imagine chocolate bars functioning as a method of payment in today’s culture (outside of the playground, of course), it still feels true to say that hot drinks — whether it’s tea, coffee or hot chocolate — often feel ritualistic on some level. There’s something about grasping a hot mug between your hands, and sipping on a steaming drink that spreads not only warmth but deep comfort. It’s a small pleasure that has endured millenia.

*It is possible to order Saint Lucian cocoa sticks online (scroll on down to the ‘further reading’ section for a special discount code) and I urge you to try the real deal! Cocoa powder can be used as an alternative but it’s not quite the same.

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BEAN TO BAR IN SAINT LUCIA

cocoa pods, fermenting on the ground in Saint Lucia

It was on a recent trip to Saint Lucia (where my dad’s family are from) that I first got to grips with the process of growing cocoa beans and making chocolate. Saint Lucia was the first Caribbean island to start growing cocoa back in the 1600s and cocoa plantations are a feature of the southern end of the island. There’s nothing that looks quite like a cocoa pod: they are bulbous, gnarly, reptilian things found in a variety of colours, shifting from fluorescent green to yellow, purple to bright orange.

That 4.5 million tonnes of cocoa are grown every year might trick you into believing that cocoa pods grow easily — in fact, cocoa trees are pretty fussy. They grow exclusively within the ‘cocoa belt’ — 20 degrees north and south of the equator. They need to be less than 700m above sea level. They require shade, humidity and deep, rich, well-drained soil. They are prone to disease.

As you travel from the north of Saint Lucia to the south, even on such a small island you can see and feel the changes: the landscape becomes more akin to a rainforest, the air becomes heavier with moisture… and, as it turns out, this is conducive to growing cocoa (Saint Lucia’s volcanic soil also helps).

Cocoa tree saplings

Cocoa pods are harvested twice a year and carefully cut off the tree using machetes. Within a pod there might be thirty to fifty beans nestled in a sticky white pulp that contains natural acids, sugars and alcohol — the cocoa pod’s amniotic fluid, if you like. Once beans and air meet, fermentation begins. This process typically takes two to eight days and it is the chemical changes catalysed by fermentation that have a huge impact on the final taste, aroma and colour of a chocolate bar.

After the beans have been dried, they are roasted, ground, refined, tempered and then poured and set into the chocolate bars that we are familiar with. It is the caramelisation (‘Mailliard reaction’) that occurs during the roasting process that helps to develop complexity of flavour in the chocolate, whilst it is the process of tempering the chocolate (taking it through specific temperature levels to control the transition from liquid to solid) that ensures a shiny finish and the right snap. All of these processes result in a wide range of compelling flavours: a bar of chocolate (particularly the dark kind) can be more or less bitter, fruity, wine-like, woody, earthy, spicy, resinous, smoky, reminiscent of liquorice and so much more. Our global love affair with chocolate seems unlikely to abate, and no wonder.

Making chocolate at the bean to bar experience at Project Chocolat in Saint Lucia

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SAINT LUCIAN COCOA TEA

Serves 2 (or 1 generously)

Ingredients

• 500ml (17fl oz/generous 2 cups) water

• 3 fresh bay leaves, torn in half

• 4 cloves

• 1/4 nutmeg, grated

• 1/2 cinnamon stick, broken up a little

• Pinch of fine sea salt, or to taste

• Approx. 1/3 (30g/1oz) of a cocoa stick, grated

• 200ml (7fl oz/scant 1 cup) evaporated milk

• Caster sugar, to taste

• 1 tsp cornflour (cornstarch)

Method

1. Combine the water, spices and salt in a pan, bring to the boil, then simmer gently for 12-15 minutes to create a spiced stock.
   

   

2. Add the grated chocolate to the stock and simmer gently for a further 7 minutes.

   

3. Add the evaporated milk and sweeten with sugar to taste (I like 2 to 3 tbsp), then simmer for another 3 minutes.

   

4. In a small glass or bowl whisk the cornflour with a small measure of the chocolate liquid until there are no lumps, then add this paste to the saucepan and stir to make sure it’s dispersed. Simmer for a final 2–3 minutes, then pass through a fine strainer to serve.

   

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FURTHER READING + RESOURCES

• To buy Saint Lucian cocoa sticks, head on over to Saint Lucia Sea Moss — the only place (as far as I know) that you can buy them in the UK. They’ve kindly provided a special discount code for you, my subscribers, so that you can get 15% off your purchase: simply use ALEXINA15.

• Here are a few addresses in Saint Lucia that are worth checking out if you decide to visit:

  • Stay at the gorgeous oasis that is Cap Maison, with the warmest, loveliest team

  • Head to Marina Street for cocoa tea and have a bake with it (I can’t tell you the name of the place exactly, but I reckon if you get onto the street and ask someone, they’ll be able to direct you)

  • Eat food from Stacy at her kitchen truck Cool Runnings — it’s a combination of Saint Lucian and Jamaican food, and it’s some of the best on the island

  • Take part in the bean-to-bar experience at Project Chocolat

• The history of cocoa is a long and tortured one, and if you’d like to learn more — not only about its history but also chocolate-making and chocolate culture more broadly — I would recommend Sam Bilton’s The Philosophy of Chocolate.

• If you’re ever in Covent Garden and fancying something sweet do check out the churros at Aguamiel in Covent Garden. I felt validated when I discovered that churros are not typically served with chocolate sauce in Mexico (I’ve always found chocolate sauce to be far too heavy and dominant in flavour for churros) but instead a spiced, milky hot chocolate not dissimilar to cocoa tea. The idea is that you dip the churros into the hot chocolate and I tell ya, it works so much better.

• I couldn’t talk about chocolate and not also mention my friend Octavia, who is the most incredible chocolatier. Do check out the brilliant article she wrote for Nicola Lamb’s Kitchen Projects about chocolate truffles:

  Kitchen Project #123: All About Truffles

  Even better, go and give her a follow on Instagram so that you can grab a box of her creations when she releases her limited chocolate drops — they are not to be missed.