Recipe: Chef Ranveer Brar's Chilly Hot Chocolate

Chef Ranveer Brar's decadent Chilly Hot Chocolate is high on calories, but boy is it yum!  

It features cream, whipped cream, a whole red chilly and a medley of other spices that cut through the sweetness. 

Lucknow-born Brar's adoration of food began watching the kebab vendors in his hometown and as a teen he left home to 'intern' with Ustad Munir Ahmed, a legendary kebab vendor.

Brar is a magician in the kitchen creating dishes as diverse and inspired as watermelon dosa to Chicken 65 Papad Cannelloni but his asli (authentic) Dorra Kebab recipe harks back to his Lucknow days.

Always a proponent for fusion, Brar's hot chocolate recipe, presented below, is quite similar to how some of the first consumers of cocoa drank it  -- the Mayans in Central America sipped cocoa sweetened with honey and spiked with chile pepper and allspice.

Chilly Hot Chocolate

Serves: 1

• 4 tbsp cocoa natural unsweetened
• 1 whole red chilly
• 1 cup full-cream milk
• ½ cup fresh cream
• Pinch salt
• ¼ cup sugar
• ½ tbsp cinnamon powder
• ¼ tbsp grated nutmeg
• ½ cup whipped cream, to serve
• 1 tbsp cocoa powder, to serve
• 1 stick dalcheeni or cinnamon

Method

• In a saucepan, warm the milk, sugar, fresh cream, red chilly over low heat and keep stirring until the sugar melts.
  Increase the heat and bring to a boil.
• Take off heat and strain into a bowl.
  Add the cinnamon powder, nutmeg, salt, cocoa powder.
  Mix well.
• Pour into a mug and top with the whipped cream and a cinnamon stick.
  Sprinkle cocoa powder over the whipped cream using a small tea strainer sieve.

Editor's Note: To cut the calories, skip the cream and the whipped cream and use low-fat milk. Instead of sugar use stevia powder. Each brand of stevia has its own stevia for sugar substitution ratio provided on its packing.

For a vegan version, also skip the cream and whipped cream and use almond milk.

Hot Chocolate pairs well with cookies. Bake Chef Sabyasachi Gorai's Maple Cookies.

Or Hardeep Kaur's Oatmeal Cranberry Cookies. 

Chef Ranveer Brar is an author, MasterChef India judge and restaurateur with over 25 years of experience in the food industry.