Most cocktails are served cold. So there's something unique about a warm cocktail, especially when you combine warm chocolate notes with coffee and some smoky notes.
Our Christmas Mezcal hot chocolate recipe does bring all these together in one perfect holiday drink.
A perfect hot Christmas cocktail
Christmas cocktails should be part of every Christmas party. There's nothing better to serve when your family and friends sit together and celebrate.
And by combining a crowd pleaser like hot chocolate with a smoky punch from Mezcal and some coffee notes, you'll get a warm, cozy, and festive cocktail that's perfect for the occasion.
If hot cocktails or Mezcal aren't your thing, here's an overview of our best Christmas cocktails for this year's festive season.
The ingredients
Mezcal is the start of this cocktail. -The smoky spirit is produced in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. And fittingly, Oaxaca is not only known for producing excellent agave spirits but also for making amazing chocolate and hot chocolate.
The wonderful, possibly surprising, thing about these two products is that they go exceptionally well together. By adding Mezcal to hot chocolate, you add a beautifully peppery and earthy note to it.
To get a bit more sweetness into the cocktail, we use coffee liqueur combined with a dark and salted chocolate liqueur. Apart from the sweet flavors, these two elements also bring a slightly bitter note to the cocktail.
To round off the Hot Christmas Mezcal Cocktail, simply add a dash or two of orange cocktail bitters. These go extremely well with every single ingredient.
So, this is what we'll need:
- Mezcal Joven
- Coffee liqueur
- Dark chocolate and sea salt liqueur
- Hot chocolate
- Heavy cream
- Orange bitters
How to make the hot chocolate base
The base for our Christmas Mezcal drink is hot chocolate. I recommend using dark chocolate to get those slightly bitter notes. Plus, dark chocolate also pairs better with chocolate and Mezcal.
To keep it traditionally Mexican, you could even look for Oaxacan chocolate. And you can either use a regular bar and cut or grate it or save yourself some time and buy dark chocolate chips.
For one serving, you need 4oz of milk and three tablespoons of dark chocolate. If you're making more than one drink, scale up the ingredients and make the hot chocolate in one batch.
Heat up the milk gently, add the dark chocolate and stir until the chocolate melted completely. Use low or low-to-medium heat to avoid getting skin on the milk.
To season the chocolate base, add a pinch of cinnamon to the mix.
Equipment
- 1 Jigger
Ingredients
- 1 oz Mezcal Joven
- 1 oz Dark chocolate and (sea) salt liqueur (eg. the one from Organic Mixology)
- 0.5 oz Coffee liqueur
- 3 dashes Orange bitters
- 4 oz Hot chocolate
- 0.75 oz Heavy cream
- Cinnamon stick and grated nutmeg (garnish)
Instructions
- Pour Mezcal, liqueurs, and orange bitters into your mug or glass and stir quickly.
- Add 4 oz. of hot chocolate and stir again.
- Gently layer the heavy cream on top by pouring it over the back of a bar spoon.