Shake Shack Salted Peanut Butter Hot Chocolate à la Mode

Shake Shack Salted Peanut Butter Hot Chocolate à la Mode

I am strongly of the belief that vanilla ice cream can enhance any dessert. Pie, cake, cookies, brownies, more ice cream - everything is better with some vanilla ice cream on/in/around it. So once I saw the sign at Shake Shack advertising vanilla ice cream in hot chocolate, I got pretty excited. I was willing to make the sacrifice of "hot" cocoa becoming just "warm" or even "kinda cold" cocoa, if it meant vanilla ice cream in my favorite winter drink. In the end, however, the ice cream didn't change the temperature of the hot chocolate at all.
It's occurred to me that it's possible that the way I ate/drank this was different from the way a lot of others would. I started by taking the top off and going in with a spoon, eating all the ice cream. Then I put the lid back on and drank it as hot chocolate. I can imagine that anyone who just let the ice cream melt and drank it all together might have a different experience temperature-wise, but the way I drank it I got nice cold ice cream followed by perfectly hot chocolate.
The salted peanut butter flavor was also great - the nutty flavor made it feel nice and cozy, perfect for Christmastime (which it was when I drank it, though this review is pretty late).
It didn't come with whipped cream, because... it came with ice cream. The sleeve on the cup was pretty adorable, and it was just under $6 for this pretty large size ($5 without ice cream).

Ratings
Taste: 5
Value: 3
Presentation: 4
Convenience: 4

Dean & Deluca Hot Chocolate

Dean and Deluca Hot Chocolate
We popped into a Dean & Deluca during a trip up to Rockefeller Plaza to look at the Christmas lights, and of course it wouldn't have been a Christmas trip without hot chocolate. Like most things at Dean & Deluca, it was a fair bit of money for not a lot of hot chocolate - $3 for only 8 oz. The chocolate was very good, though - it had a taste to it I can't quite place (a similar taste to the hot chocolate from Guy & Gallard, if you've been there). My girlfriend suggests it might just be the taste of chocolate syrup, and she may very well be right. Normally, I can tell when hot chocolate is made with syrup, since I don't particularly like the taste - however, I suspect this might be the difference between poorly-made syrup cocoa and well-made syrup cocoa. Dean & Deluca's is definitely well-made. It's rich and tasty, perfect for a cold winter night! It went very nicely with a ginger snap cookie I bought there as well. The cocoa came with whipped cream on top, and while sleeves were available for the cups, they didn't fit the small size.

Ratings
Taste: 4.5
Value: 3
Presentation: 4
Convenience: 3

Starbucks Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate

Starbucks Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate

I haven't reviewed Starbucks' normal hot chocolate yet, mostly because I already know I don't really like it (I find it too bland) and so the thought of buying some just to review it doesn't really excite me. I am, however, pretty excited about this drink - the Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate. The salted caramel flavor gives it all the richness that their usual hot chocolate lacks, and a sort of wintry warmth that I get excited about (I'm a big Christmas nerd, so anything that makes me feel cozy in winter gets me all cheery).

I didn't take a picture of it, because for some reason it didn't even occur to me, but it comes with whipped cream and little pieces of salt on top, which is very cute.

Prices vary from Starbucks to Starbucks (there's a pretty significant difference between the Washington suburbs and midtown Manhattan), but it's usually around $3.50 for a tall, which is 12 oz.

Ratings
Taste: 4
Value: 3.5
Presentation: 4
Convenience: 4

Madeleine Hot Chocolate

Madeleine (aka "Maison du Macaron") Hot Chocolate


I'm going to begin with a bit of an off-topic story. I have loved macarons (not to be confused with macaroons) since long before I ever had the chance to try one. I thought they were just the cutest things, all round and colorful, and wanted to know what they tasted like. When I finally found a place that served macarons early last year, I was ecstatic - until I tried it. It was hard, chewy, and the rose flavor just tasted like a mouthful of perfume. I had 2 or 3, and they all tasted stale, probably because they were. I resigned myself to a life without macarons, until one day a professor of mine recommended Madeleine on 23rd, specifically mentioning the macarons. Hopes raised, my friends and I journeyed over after class...

We were not disappointed! The seats are mostly couches and chairs arranged around coffee tables, making it very cozy though difficult to find seating for a group. The macarons are amazing and the pastries are also delicious. If anyone's interested, my favorite flavor is the pistachio-cassis, though I also love the champagne flavors (mostly because they come with gold powder on them).

Pictured: deliciousness

Anyway, onto the hot chocolate. Admittedly, part of the reason I started with the rant about the macarons is because there isn't a whole lot to say about the hot chocolate. It's good! It's not mind-blowingly delicious, but it's good and there's nothing really to complain about. It doesn't come with whipped cream or anything, but it does come in a mug and on a nice silver tray if you get it to stay (and since you won't be able to resist those macarons, those make for nice decorations too!)

Ratings:
Taste: 4
Value: 3
Presentation: 3.5

Cupcake Royale

This is a kind of old review, so it's still from Washington even though I'm back in New York. This is for Cupcake Royale, a cute cupcake café in Seattle. To keep this slightly less confusing I've added tags to certain reviews of the state in which the café being reviewed is - for instance, this Seattle shop gets a "Washington" tag. Instant hot chocolates won't get tags since you can probably find them in any grocery store, and big chains like Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks won't get tags for obvious reasons.

Cupcake Royale


The cupcakes from Cupcake Royale are absolutely delicious, let me say that first. I'm not even much of a cupcake person, since buttercream frosting is too sweet for my tastes.

Obviously, they get full marks for presentation - getting your cupcake and drink to stay earns you a pretty adorable mug and plate, and some whipped cream to boot. The hot chocolate is $2.35 for a medium, which is the size pictured here - and they certainly help you get your money's worth, since the mug is so full it's almost difficult to drink at first.

That said, the taste itself doesn't quite live up to the cute presentation. I was careful to try the hot chocolate before taking a bite of the cupcake, because I know that eating something super-sweet can make a sweet drink seem tasteless... but that wasn't necessary. The chocolate was pretty tasteless anyway, and once I started eating the cupcake, it only seemed more so. I could give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they made the hot chocolate less sweet so that having a mug of cocoa along with a cupcake wouldn't send one into a hyperglycemic fit, but quite honestly if you're worried about having too much sugar you probably shouldn't buy a big cupcake and a medium hot chocolate.

Ratings:
Taste: 3
Value: 4
Presentation: 5

Lily O'Brien's White Hot Chocolate

Lily O'Brien's White Hot Chocolate

Pictured: my girlfriend and some seriously delicious hot chocolate

Ideally, I'd prefer to review this after reviewing their normal hot chocolate. However, I forgot to take a picture or any notes when I had their normal hot chocolate, so that's simply too bad. (For now, suffice it to say that it's very good.) Anyway, their website (and a sign on the wall) says that Lily O'Brien is a pretty big name in chocolate over in Ireland. I believe their Bryant Park franchise is their only one in America, so I should consider myself lucky. Their white hot chocolate is fantastic.

They make their drinks with actual melted chocolate - an employee there told me that if you let your hot chocolate sit until it gets cold, it will actually resolidify into a block of chocolate. I imagine this is the reason their drinks are a little bit on the pricier side - about $4.50 for a regular, or $5 for a large, which is what is in the picture. It's not much more than you'd pay at Starbucks, but their handmade approach makes it much better. This white hot chocolate is fantastic.

I should say that if you don't like white chocolate, you won't agree with me here. Personally, I love white chocolate. And this drink tastes like liquid white chocolate (because that's what it is) - it's incredibly rich, so much so that even with the smaller size (which isn't really small) you won't find yourself more. The large size is perfect for sharing (if you're into that), and best of all, your drink comes with a free piece of chocolate!

The cups are just typical cups, no fancy lid mechanics or anything like that. But there is a sleeve! I'm hesitant to have to rate this down for presentation since it came with no whipped cream or any sort of "to stay" cup, but it isn't fair to boost that grade just because the taste is good (that's what the taste category is there for, after all).

Ratings:
Taste: 5
Value: 3
Presentation: 2
Convenience: 4

Instant Hot Chocolate: Starbucks "Holiday Cocoa Trio" Toasted Marshmallow

Finally it's gotten cold again, and it's hot chocolate season once again! Alright, so it's been cold for a while, and I've been drinking hot chocolate since September - I just haven't gotten around to writing any reviews. This is partially because I've discovered a few really great hot chocolates, and I've been less experimental - but since I haven't written reviews on any of those great hot chocolates, I really have no excuse. Anyway, on with the show!

Starbucks "Holiday Cocoa Trio" Toasted Marshmallow

I saw this at my school's Starbucks and snatched it up - there weren't a lot left, and the "toasted marshmallow" flavor that replaced the normal cocoa trio's "Salted Caramel" sounded interesting. I also liked that the directions called for milk, not water. As I've mentioned, I always follow the recipe given on the box for reviews, but personally I much prefer hot chocolate made with milk. So when the directions call for milk, I don't have to worry about having to drink watery chocolate, and I don't have to worry about knowing that the hot chocolate could be better were the directions different.

Having made it, I'm still curious about the "toasted marshmallow". The packet comes with marshmallows inside (something I managed not to notice until I was done stirring it). Are those supposed to be the toasted marshmallows the name refers to? They aren't toasted by any means, instead they taste like stale Lucky Charms mushrooms. I thought maybe there would be some sort of "toasty" quality to the flavor of the drink, but if there is I'm not noticing it. The hot chocolate is good, though - it's weaker than a lot of hot chocolates you can get at a cafe, but I think that's pretty unavoidable with instant hot chocolate. I should also mention that upon finishing, I found a fair-sized clump of powder stuck to the bottom of my mug - so it's possible that it could have had more flavor than I give it credit for.

The set costs about $10, with a total of 9 packets (3 of each flavor). That's a little over a dollar a cup, which for instant hot chocolate, is a little steep. While I have yet to determine if the only difference between the normal cocoa and the "Toasted Marshmallow" is the presence of a few marshmallows, there's still the peppermint flavor - so at least it's a sort of "sampler".

Ratings
Taste: 3.5
Value: 2.5
Convenience: 4

Disneyland Hot Chocolate

I was in LA for a bit recently, and of course spent a day in Disneyland. While there, I bought a cup of hot chocolate at the "Bengal BBQ," and was in for a pleasant surprise.

Disneyland Hot Chocolate


Maybe I was underestimating Disneyland by assuming this would be perfectly average hot chocolate. It was, in fact, delicious. It was so good that later that day I was fighting off the urge to go back for a second cup, and these are not small cups. It comes in only one size, which I'd estimate at 16 oz, so the size of a "grande" at Starbucks. For so much hot chocolate, it was pretty cheap - $2.79.

As cute as the cup is, the hot chocolate itself came with no whipped cream or marshmallows or anything of the sort. The cup was styrofoam, so it didn't get too hot, though the drink wasn't painfully hot to begin with.

I'd have to say, this may be the best hot chocolate I've ever bought. Fitting for coming from "the happiest place on Earth" - but sort of disappointing, since that's not somewhere I can visit regularly, so this hot chocolate is going to have to be a special treat whenever I'm in the neighborhood.

Ratings
Taste: 5
Value: 4
Presentation: 3
Convenience: 4

Instant Hot Chocolate: Ghirardelli and Safeway

On winter nights (or, in Seattle's case, summer nights that feel like winter nights) there's nothing better than a mug of hot chocolate! To save you from the horrors of curling up with a mediocre cup of hot chocolate, I'll review two brands of instant hot chocolate.

Note that for the sake of these reviews, both drinks were prepared as directed by the instructions on the boxes. I also won't be rating presentation, as that of course depends on the person making the hot chocolate. We can't assume everyone's will be as beautiful as mine!

I'll also be introducing a new criteria - "convenience". Yes, this is already a criteria for "to-go" drinks, but in the case of instant cocoas it will have a different meaning: If a recipe just calls for some hot water, that's about as simple as it can get - but if it starts calling for you to steam some milk and add vanilla, then it will start losing points in the convenience category.

Ghirardelli Ground Chocolate

Ghirardelli makes cocoa powder specifically intended for hot chocolate, and this isn't it. This is just "ground chocolate," but there's still a recipe on the back for hot chocolate - 4 tbsp added to a cup of hot milk.

I found it perfectly tasty - it wasn't thin or weak like a lot of other cocoa mixes. I can't say whether this has more to do with the recipe calling for milk instead of water or a generous amount of powder than with the powder itself, but the fact is that with the recipe followed precisely, this is some good hot chocolate. I'm eager to trying their actual hot chocolate cocoa, to see if it tastes any better.

The canister costs about $6, and has enough powder to make 12 cups of hot chocolate. That's about $0.50 a cup. If milk isn't a regular staple in your house, you could take into account that you're also paying a bit more to buy milk, as opposed to instant cocoas made with water.

Ratings
Taste: 4
Value: 3.5
Convenience: 4


Safeway "Rich Chocolate" Hot Cocoa Mix


I honestly couldn't find a better picture of this box anywhere online. Anyway, the directions for this hot chocolate are to mix one packet with boiling water, which is exactly how it tastes: like chocolate-flavored water. It's weak and watery.

As far as packets of hot chocolate go, I'm always disappointed when they don't contain marshmallows - but some research shows that there is a version of this that contains marshmallows, and it doesn't cost any extra, so I won't count that against them.

You could say here that you get what you pay for - a box of this costs only $2.19 and contains 10 servings, so about $0.22 a cup. However, if I ever drank this again I would go off the given recipe to either make it with milk instead of water, or use two packets in one cup of water to try and give it more flavor. So for me personally, it'd be $0.44 a cup, and only 5 servings in the box.

Ratings
Taste: 2
Value: 5
Convenience: 5

Dunkin Donuts

Dunkin Donuts Hot Chocolate, White Hot Chocolate, & Dunkaccino



These three items on the Dunkin Donuts menu have the same price and same cups, so for convenience's sake, I'll lump them together into one ridiculously long review.

Living in Seattle for part of the year and New York for the rest, my own experience (and a quick search on Google Maps) tells me that Dunkin Donuts is pretty much an East Coast thing, which is pretty strange considering how many there are on the East Coast. At least on Manhattan, you can't walk more than a couple blocks without passing by one - they could easily extend this sort of influence further across the country, yet here in Seattle I'd have to drive for hours to find one. Anyway, the review.

The first time I tried Dunkin Donuts hot chocolate, I did not have high expectations. It was a little over a dollar for the small size, and coming from the land of Starbucks where $2 got you a cup of hot water with a tea bag, that didn't bode well. But I was pleasantly surprised when, half an hour later, my hot chocolate was cool enough to drink. It tasted like chocolate cake to me, very rich and sweet.

Later, I tried it again, expecting the very rich, chocolatey taste I remembered - and it tasted kind of weak. So maybe it's a matter of expectations. Go in there expecting nothing, and it's delicious. Go in there expecting the best drink you've ever had, and it's disappointing. Go in there multiple times a week because it's across the street and the closest place to get breakfast before class, and eventually your expectations align. And it still tastes good.

There's also white hot chocolate. I love white chocolate, and white chocolate drinks, so this was pretty exciting to me - however, I'm not as much of a fan as I thought I'd be. It tastes bland and flavorless compared to the regular hot chocolate.

Third, the Dunkaccino - some sort of combination of their hot chocolate and coffee flavors. It's got a sort of thick, rich taste that feels like it coats your mouth (anyone who's has a Caramel Macchiato at Starbucks, I believe they have a similar feeling), and it's sweet in a rich kind of way. It really has more richness than either of the hot chocolates, and tastes very much like caramel. Growing up on Starbucks mochas with crazy numbers of shots and flavors, I appreciate all that flavor for so little money.

Now let me discuss the cups, since I'm full of opinions on those. The small ones have a wide, tear-away tab that you can, theoretically, fold back to open, or put back into place to close.


Pictured is a rare functional lid on a cup of the white hot chocolate. I'd say the likelyhood of getting a lid that will actually stay in place when folded back is a bit less than 50%. Getting a lid that will close again is much, much less likely. I've had maybe two lids that successfully closed again, ever. Of course, it's a bit of a luxury for a disposable lid to re-close in the first place, but knowing that it could close back up but just won't is a little painful. Not to mention it gets cold faster, but it also starts out too hot to drink so maybe that's not such a bad thing. Oh, on that note - the small cups are made of cardboard, and don't come with sleeves, so I usually have to ask for a double-cup to keep from burning my hands.

The medium-size (and I assume large, I've never gotten one) lids are completely different:


This time, there's a separate piece. Attached in the middle, it's a flap that you can fold forward to plug up the hole, or fold backwards to keep it out of the way. These lids rarely fail, and the medium-and-larger cups are made of styrofoam instead of cardboard, so the cup isn't too hot to hold. For those two reasons, I usually pay the extra bit of money and get the medium size.

Oh, and on the subject of presentation... there's not much to say. I've never been offered whipped cream or anything of the sort, so I'll assume that there isn't any. I won't discount the possibility that there's a can back there reserved for those who ask, but after months of frequent visits to several different franchises and never a single mention, I can at least guarantee you won't get anything if you don't ask.

Ratings
Dunkin Donuts Hot Chocolate
Taste: 3.5
Value: 5
Presentation: 2
Convenience: 4.5

Dunkin Donuts White Hot Chocolate
Taste: 2.5
Value: 5
Presentation: 2
Convenience: 4.5

Dunkin Donuts Dunkaccino
Taste: 4
Value: 5
Presentation: 2
Convenience: 4.5

Review Rundown

As much as this blog is probably going to be me rambling on about where I found a drink and what I thought of it and blah blah blah, there has to be some level of consistency and something that allows for comparison. So I'm going to implement a set of criteria. Each drink will receive a rating from 1-5 on each of the following:

Taste: Of course, this is probably the most important. We don't buy hot chocolate so that we can place it on a shelf of our house and look at it. We buy it so we can drink it and it can taste good.

Value: What good is a cup of chocolate that you can't afford? Conversely, a low price can make a drink taste that much sweeter!

Presentation: Whipped cream, chocolate sauce, a cherry... all those little things can go a long way.

Drinks bought "to go" will have an additional criteria:

Convenience: A lid, a flap to reseal it, a sleeve to keep you from burning your hands... if you can't carry it around, what's the point?


I considered adding an average score to the end, but decided against it - for one, it can end up with fractions as small as 1/8 (since I often give ratings like 3.5), and it also can be misleading, as not all criteria deserve the same weight (personally I consider taste much more important than presentation!).

Mocha Addendum

Project Cocoa is primarily about hot chocolate. However, it often comes to pass that I'm tired and need a little more than just sugar. At these times, I'm hardly going to turn down a shot of espresso in my hot chocolate - and this, children, is what we call a mocha. (I think.)

So in this blog, I'll also be discussing mochas I drink! But this leads to an important disclaimer:

The Mocha Disclaimer
Beyond mochas, I am not a big coffee person. I can't tell good coffee from bad coffee or good espresso from bad espresso. When I discuss the taste of a mocha, I'm talking about everything but the taste of the espresso, since in that case I'd have no idea what I'm saying. It may be the case that some particularly good espresso would make the mocha taste inexplicably better to me, or vice versa, but I can't say for sure.

Our tale begins

Alright, I'll finally write the first post here. Project Cocoa is an idea I had last winter, as I developed a staggering hot chocolate addiction. I bought hot chocolate from cafés all over Manhattan, and quickly came to realize:

All hot chocolate is not created equal.

Well okay, really I already knew that. But with as often as I was drinking hot chocolate, the differences were becoming pretty apparent, and with the discovery of both disappointing and exciting cups of hot chocolate, I started wanting a place to write things down. I decided to start a hot chocolate blog - somewhere I can tell the world (or whoever happens to Google "Hot chocolate ratings" or whatever could possibly lead them here) what I happen to think of hot chocolate.

Of course, now that I spent so long forgetting or not having time to start the blog, it's summer now. Hardly hot chocolate season. Fortunately, I'm not spending this summer in hot, muggy New York - I'm home with my family in the suburbs of Washington. Washington has never really understood the concept of summer, so it's still cloudy and a bit chilly here. As long as Washington never catches on and notices it's June, I should be fine with my hot beverages.

Well, with all this out of the way, I will conclude this absurdly long post. Let Project Cococa begin!!