Rose Flavoured White Hot Chocolate (slow cooker, stovetop or microwave)

A fabulous hot drink with white chocolate melted into milk, complemented by the exotic and warming tones of rose. A rather glamorous take on the humble yet delicious hot chocolate. Oh, and three easy ways to make it.

This is an extremely simple recipe, for flavours that are anything but. I even wondered if it warrants its own blog post. But one sip of this indulgent hot drink and I knew it was worth sharing – even if only for the idea of this intriguing combination.

White chocolate and rose. Doesn’t it sound exotic and warming? I can’t even remember how I got the idea to try this. In my first attempt I used a rose extract that had been sent to me. It was amazing. However after giving it some thought I decided that rose extract isn’t too easily available here so I didn’t want to use it in a recipe where it would be one of the main players.

But what could I use to get the rose scent and flavour? Ooh, what about chopped Turkish delight? (aka lokum) This a traditional sweet here in Greece too, did you know that? We call it loukoumi and make it in many different flavours, one of them being rose of course. Well, that kind of worked (it was great in the slow cooker, not so great in the microwave) but the main issue was that it made the drink way too sweet. The amount of loukoumi necessary to get the rose flavour was just too much. So I left it to work on other things.

Then, a few weeks later when I was trying my almond cardamom rose cake (have you tried it yet? Please do, it’s wonderful) I suddenly realised the solution for my hot chocolate was staring me in the face all along. By means of a blue bottle of rose water, sitting on my shelf. Now why didn’t I think of that earlier? Rose water is available in all supermarkets here as it’s often used in Greek sweets. If it’s easier to find extract where you are, just use that. You’ll have to experiment with the amount as it depends on the brand and the concentration. With mine I only need one, or maximum two, drops per cup of hot chocolate.

A note re the preparation methods. The stovetop and microwave options are great for one or two servings. The slow cooker version is best saved for when you want to make two or more (depending on the size of your appliance – two is the minimum for the 3.5lt model, anything bigger will need larger quantities otherwise the milk might burn).

And now for what might be the easiest recipe on my blog…