Hello all, Amy here on bright, cold day. My friends at EXO Coffee make Mole Dulce Lattes, and they are amazing. They discovered Mano Y Metate mole, developed the recipe, and only later did we meet!

I can’t make coffee like that, but I wanted to make a hot drink for myself at home. So I decided to try Mole Dulce Hot Chocolate.

I started with half a tin of Mano Y Metate Mole Dulce powder (about 1 oz). In a dry pan I toasted it over low heat, stirring constantly until it got a shade darker and I started to smell the spices and cough just a bit from the chile. You can see oil from the almonds and the melting chocolate on the wooden spoon.

Then I added one cup of water and simmered for about 15 to 20 minutes.

Mole Dulce powder is made with A LOT of chocolate.  I use Xocolatl, a handmade Oaxacan drinking chocolate imported by a sweet Tucson family and available seasonally at the Rillito Farmers’ Market and online. (Tell the young salesperson Isaac we sent you.) The only ingredients in Xocolatl are cacao beans from Chiapas (60%), cane sugar, Mexican/Ceylon cinnamon and almonds. It is wonderful eaten straight, where you’ll notice its coarse ground texture, formerly found in chocolates like Ibarra, before they changed their recipe. Xocolatl also comes in 70%.

I melted 6 small sticks (about 125g) of Xocolatl Classic into the pan, making a glossy chocolate sauce, with some suspended solids from the mole and chocolate giving it interesting texture.

Then I added 4 cups of milk from Danzeisen Dairy from Laveen, Arizona. When I was a kid, my mom would buy raw milk with a cream layer in bottles like these from a drive through milk store. What the milks then and now do have in common are freshness, lower ‘food miles’ (less transportation fuel from farm to consumer), and returnable bottles with a deposit. Plus, the bottles are so pretty!

Now, for the frothy topping. The saying goes that as much work as someone put into the foam layer on the top of your chocolate mug, that’s how much they love you. I heard you could get this by pouring from one container into another from as high as you can, but I found this is messy, possibly dangerous and disappointing.

But there’s a tool designed for this purpose. My grandmother had a molinillo just like this.

However, she didn’t let us use it, just like the fancy dishes, the living room, or anything else that grandkids would certainly ruin or break. These are now available at big Mexican grocery stores, and are so fun to use! They have free-spinning rings and holes which act like wires on a whisk. (Of course, a metal whisk works at least as well.) To use a molinillo, put the handle between your palms, rolling back and forth to spin it in the liquid. Yes, this is when you sing the cho-co-la-te song, singing and spinning as fast as you can! Then sit and savor your warm, frothy, sweet, spicy, rich cup slowly.