Video Transcript

Hello, my name is Melissa and on behalf of Expert Village today I¡¯m going to teach you how to make the perfect cup of hot chocolate. Now in this clip it¡¯s time to garnish our hot chocolate. Now you have to keep in mind when you¡¯re preparing your hot chocolate in our earlier clips when we were talking about having four to eight ounces of milk per twenty-five grams of hot chocolate, the four ounces really fills only about half of this cup. So you have to make sure that you¡¯re going to make enough hot chocolate for yourself or for you and your guests so you¡¯ll just want to do those conversions and those measurements. Now what I like to do is once I pour the hot chocolate into the cup I always like to stir it just in case there are any spare bits, because we¡¯re dealing with milk, sometimes you get that little layer of uh, dried milk on the top and you want to make sure that, that¡¯s taken off in case that happens. So we¡¯ve stirred this up and it¡¯s time for you to prepare it in any way that you want. If you want to have a bit of a Halloween theme into this or a festive theme you can always go to a kid¡¯s toy store and get things like plastic bugs to put on top, but first we need to pour to have something to put those on top of. So what, what would hot chocolate be without a little bit of whipped cream Now in this case I¡¯ve got white whipped cream and chocolate whipped cream so if you like things really chocolately we¡¯re ultimately going for the chocolatiest hot chocolate that you can make. So I¡¯m going to put a little bit of whipped cream, the white kind here, and we¡¯re sparing no expense here and then we¡¯re going to take our chocolate, chocolate whipped cream and we¡¯ll put some of that on top as well, just to decorate it up a little bit. For a little added color, you¡¯ll see too, makes for a nicer presentation as well and you can decide however you want to, also if you want to put any flavors, any herbs on top as well. So in case I¡¯m going to take a few mint leaves, and I¡¯m just going to drizzle them on top, just ever so lightly, we don¡¯t want a lot, it¡¯ll add just a hint of minty taste to it, and it will also look really nice on top of it, again we don¡¯t want a lot, just a, just a little bit on top there. The other thing that I like to do, is you can of course decide whether you want marshmallows, instead of whipped cream on top as well, you don¡¯t necessarily have to put any herbs on top, the mint just adds that little bit of flavor to it, though I find. And finally take your favorite chocolate bar, you can always if you¡¯re presenting this, you can put it on a little plate like this and have some chocolate and marshmallows off to the side like this, so you can give a choice to anybody having this. Um, the other thing too, that I always like to do, because we¡¯re going for a really chocolately flavor is take something like your favorite chocolate bar, in this case we picked the Toblerone bar, put it up into, chop it up into little chunks, a you can just sort of drizzle a couple of those on top as well, so you can add a little bit of chocolate chunk to it, and you have got a perfectly delicious cup of hot chocolate.