Hot cocoa is made from cocoa powder, which has had most of its cocoa butter pressed out. Drinking chocolate is made from chocolate itself, so it keeps every bit of that butter and drinks fuller and silkier. Hot chocolate is the name people use for both. Our Noire 73% melts into drinking chocolate at home in five minutes.
The names blur because the drinks blur. What really separates them is one ingredient: the natural fat of the cacao bean. That fat begins in a pod, ripening on the trunk of a tree in the shade of the forest on our family’s estate in Cameroon, long before it ever meets your milk.
The difference in one table
| Hot cocoa | Hot chocolate | Drinking chocolate | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Made from | Cocoa powder | Powder or melted chocolate | Chocolate itself |
| Cocoa butter | Mostly removed | Varies | All of it |
| Texture | Light | Light to rich | Rich and silky |
| Usually sweetened | Yes | Yes | Lightly, or by the chocolate |
| Common name | US | UK | Europe and specialist cafés |
What is hot cocoa?
Hot cocoa is cocoa powder whisked into hot milk or water with sugar. With most of the cocoa butter gone, it is a lighter cup that leans on the milk and sugar for its body.
In the US, hot cocoa is the everyday name, and it often comes as a sweetened instant mix.
What is hot chocolate?
In the UK, hot chocolate is the word for any warm chocolate drink, whether it began as powder, flakes or a melted bar. The name tells you very little about what is in your cup, so the ingredient list is worth a look.
What is drinking chocolate?
Drinking chocolate is real chocolate, chopped or finely grated, melted into hot milk or water. Because it begins as chocolate rather than powder, it keeps every bit of the bean’s cocoa butter, and that is what gives it a thicker, silkier body and a finish that lingers. The Austrian bean-to-bar maker Zotter draws the same line in its guide to drinking chocolate and hot cocoa.
It is also the older of the two. London’s first chocolate house opened in 1657, pouring chocolate hot with water and spices (Londonist), nearly two centuries before anyone had pressed cocoa into powder.
Is sipping chocolate different?
Sipping chocolate is drinking chocolate at its most generous: thick, with a high ratio of chocolate to milk, and poured into small cups meant to be lingered over.
How to make drinking chocolate at home
Warm 200ml of milk until it steams, without letting it boil, then whisk in 45g of chopped dark chocolate until it turns smooth and glossy. Our full method is in can you make hot chocolate with a chocolate bar?
For a gentler, dairy-free cup, use Limbe 55%, our vegan milk chocolate, with organic oat milk. And to meet the fruit behind the cup, read what is cacao?
Whichever name you give it, a cup is only ever as good as the cacao in it. Ours comes from one place, our family’s estate in Cameroon, and is paid for at about $10 a kilo, worked out backwards from the Anker Living Wage for rural Cameroon. Our price comparison shows how that compares.
FAQs
Drinking Chocolate and Hot Cocoa
Not always. In the US, hot cocoa usually means a drink made from cocoa powder. In the UK, hot chocolate covers everything from a powder sachet to melted chocolate.
Drinking chocolate, because it is made from chocolate itself and keeps all of its cocoa butter.
Very thick drinking chocolate, made with a high ratio of chocolate to milk and served in small cups to be lingered over.
Yes. Warm 200ml of milk until it steams, then whisk in around 45g of chopped dark chocolate until smooth and glossy.
Written by Bantu Chocolate.
