Hot Chocolate

coffee_extremist

We want to offer a crazy good hot chocolate at our new cafe - thick and syrupy. Think 'Churros con Chocolate' - only minus the churros cause we're not allowed to fry in our cafe. I'm thinking proper good quality chocolate melted with milk then kept hot and constantly stirred in some sort of counter top dispenser. Is this something that is commonly done? Is it prohibitively expensive or difficult to do? I'm just wondering because I haven't seen it around much...usually hot chocolate is just the powdered variety made to order. Does anyone have any recommendations of really good hot choc recipies - powdered or otherwise?

psaigh

Here in SA, I've seen it done a fair bit (bracegirdles, ecco, chocolate bean, cocolat to name a few).  And while it is easy to do, the costs (both in setup and ongoing) usually sway proprietors towards the powdered stuff. Either way, you're gonna want to use a quality chocolate to begin with.  For me, i love belcolade, calebaut and if you feel like dishing out, velrhona.  The are a number of packet mixes that immitate a real ganashe but cut down on the cost considerably by mixing together a whole bunch of different additives with artificial flavours.  While i've never found one that i beleive stacked up to the real stuff, i imagine most people probably couldn't tell the difference. On the powdered stuff, somage foods (in melbourne) do a great hot chocolate powder called kali, but my favourite is the african red drinking chocolate.