My want for this hot chocolate was smooth and milky sweet with just a little sting at the end. I wanted this to be less about the chocolate and much more about the cinnamon. The Vietnamese cinnamon I had in hand was equally sweet and spicy, potent in a great way, and I wanted to show off both sides.
For many years running, I've used cinnamon sticks to make the Cinnamon Hot Chocolate. This year, for no reason I could remember in the morning, I wanted to try powder instead of sticks. Time wise, since I was already slightly screwed, the powder was actually a help. But...
Trying to get strong flavor out of too few minutes to work with is not a good place to be. I sifted more cinnamon into a large stock pot and checked the clock. There was enough time to get the cinnamon to register, but no time to get the cinnamon to a smooth place where I wanted it to be and knew it would be delicious.
The first batch went out, a thousand percent disappointing, and I was wearing my annoyance. Gerardo, our lead savory cook, walked into the kitchen and instead of saying "Good Morning" to me as usual, said instead: "What's wrong?"
Nothing about that first batch was good. It was plenty of cinnamon, but crude and listless. To add insult to cinnamon injury, the powder came around to spite me: even though it had been been strained two times, the fine powder managed it's way into the final drink. I will say only that "chewy" is not a quality I seek in City Bakery hot chocolate.
Stay tuned for tales of later batches, later in the day.....