R E C I P E S
Christine Ferber’s Hot Chocolate
By Edward Behr
Once on a winter day I visited the talented Christine Ferber, master of all things sweet, in her workshop in the Alsatian village of Niedermorschwihr. She offered me a large cup of hot chocolate whose intensity was a revelation to me. She had made it with only Valrhona chocolate and heavy cream, at least that’s the way I always remembered it. Recently, however, I checked my notes and found it was really half milk and half cream. In any case, I thought that nothing could be more perfect, though I admit it was hard to drink it all.
Just now, I made an extreme hot chocolate in honor of my memory, with 85 grams (3 ounces) chocolate to 250 ml (1 cup) heavy cream, simply melting the chocolate gently in the cream — enough to serve 2. You could, and probably should, cut the cream with milk and even, depending on the chocolate, add sugar. In place of Valrhona Caraque, at 56.5 percent chocolate, which is available only to professionals, I used Valrhona Guanaja, at 70 percent. (Percentage is a rough guide to intensity, the rest of the contents being entirely or almost entirely sugar.) You could certainly use any good bar.