Making Jamaican Tea Chocolate | Recipe

On a chilly Sydney afternoon, I made a cup of hot chocolate for warm comfort in my favourite mug. I didn’t make just any hot chocolate this afternoon, but ‘Jamaican Chocolate Tea’. In Jamaica, their version of hot chocolate, called chocolate tea, is made from all natural raw chocolate. Grated to a powder and combined with cinnamon, hot milk, the full flavour of the cocoa makes this drink pure, earthy and delicious. It’s so different from the off the shelf super market hot chocolate powder mix which I find way too sweet.

Step1:

As a first step, I grinded the Jamaican cocoa into powder form using a grater that I use to grind carrots (the cocoa is rock hard so you can’t just boil it with milk hoping it melts).

Step 2:

Boil the milk (but don’t burn it!)

Step 3

Add 3 teaspoons of the cocoa powder into your large mug, 3/4 boiled hot milk and fill the rest of the mug with hot water. I added a teaspoon of coconut sugar (coconut sugar is meant to be better for you than white sugar) as a sweetener.

Voile! There you’ll have a delicious hot chocolate West Indies style. I got the raw Jamaican cocoa from my cousins in Canada when they were visiting Australia earlier in the year. I took the first photo below on a beach on the Caribbean Island of Antigua & Barbuda, not far from Jamaica. I haven’t seen raw Jamaican cocoa in any stores in Australia so this was a real treat today. If anyone knows of any store that sells cocoa in this raw form, would be happy to hear about it!