☕ Cocoa

Cocoa is a hot drink made from cocoa powder, sugar and milk. People mix it up with hot chocolate, but they are different things. Hot chocolate is made from chocolate bars, which contain cocoa butter. Cocoa is made from powder that has had almost all the butter removed. That is why cocoa is lighter and less fatty.

The Maya and the Aztecs already drank a chocolate drink. They made it cold, with pepper and corn flour, without milk. The drink reached Europe in the 16th–17th centuries and was a luxury for the nobility. The British doctor Hans Sloane mixed cocoa with milk in Jamaica in the late 17th century. This made the drink tastier, and the recipe came to England. In 1828 the Dutchman Coenraad van Houten invented a press that squeezes the butter out of cocoa. That is how cocoa powder appeared.

The usual ratio is 1–2 teaspoons of powder per glass of milk, with sugar to taste.