As the first real snow of the season falls on the New York area, thoughts drift to the warmth of... hot chocolate.

As an extreme chocophile, my interest was piqued by the article in today's Sunday Times about high-end hot chocolate. Today's snow only reinforced the idea that a cup of hot chocolate would be a good idea. So before I rush to the kitchen to brew up a hot chocolate concoction for Celia and me...

Having been to the Chocolate Show in New York many times (though I missed it this year... :-( ) I was already familiar with some of the more intense varieties of hot chocolate. Jacques Torres devised his recipe (which I got to taste at the show) at his chocolate shop in Brooklyn. It's darker than most hot chocolates you know (at least 60% cacao), it's thicker (almost like mud) and it tastes absolutely delicious. The even more intense variety adds hot peppers to the mix (a popular variation with possible origins in the movie Chocolat) giving it an extra kick.

A number of other local chocolatiers followed suit with their own thick dark varieties of hot chocolate, including the Chocolate Bar and the Paris-based La Maison du Chocolat (who may have actually been there first with the really thick mud-like hot chocolate drinks). As of a couple of years ago, the trend moved to something called drinking chocolate, an "adult" hot chocolate with that characteristic darkness and thickness, and chains like Starbuck's were offering their own versions.

You'll have to excuse me, all this talk of rich creamy hot chocolate has only made it all the more imperative that I immediately get started on that batch I planned to make, using our stash of two varieties of drinking chocolate purchased at the Chocolate Show: and ScharffenBerger's drinking chocolate and Schokinag Extreme Dark hot chocolate. Mmmmmm...