If you've ever wanted to try making hot chocolate at home, you know it isn't as simple as melting chocolate in a pan or the microwave and adding milk. This was tough, but worth the effort.
Brazilian hot chocolate involves coffee, rich dark chocolate and cinnamon. There's vanilla extract (or real vanilla bean if you like) in there as well, which makes this a spicy and tropical breakfast drink, or a drink for anytime, actually. But you have to get your stuff together to do this one.
Melting dark chocolate is a pain. Put it in the microwave or on direct heat and you get a hard, burning mess. The recipe calls for a double boiler, but I don't have one. Fortunately I have two sauce pans that stack tightly on top of each other. Boiling several cups of water in the pan beneath gave the right indirect heat to melt the chocolate.
Taza chocolate is a rich stone-ground chocolate with grainy cocoa nibs. It actually melts well but gives a thick texture to the hot chocolate drink.