Chocolate Eggnog

My mom keeps buying me lovely things for my baking and photography. A little while ago she brought me a tin box with recipe cards in it. The tin box was ‘covered’ in chocolate shavings and cacao and every single recipe included chocolate. So I sat down and picked some things that looked interesting. One of them was a chocolate drink that included egg. I don’t think I ever had egg in a drink so I thought it was funny enough to try. Before I even tried it I heard it was a chocolate version of the famous eggnog! I got totally exited! Do you have any idea how many times I’ve seen eggnog in movies and on pictures or heard about it from people? I never got the chance to drink it myself!

So I made it. As soon as I possibly could! And wow! It was like drinking chocolate mousse, so fluffy and chocolaty and oh, just lovely! I thought it was amazing. I wonder why we haven’t invented this here in Holland yet. Also, something I never knew: when making or drinking this you’ll notice it’s cold. It’s supposed to be a cold drink. For around 4 people in case anyone is wondering.

Ingredients:

3 eggs

350 ml milk

60 grams cacao

60 grams sugar

Whipped cream

Chocolate shavings

Sugar for the rim of the glasses

1. Separate the eggs. Take the egg yolks (yellow) and mix them in a bowl until creamy.

2. Put the milk with the cacao and 40 grams sugar in a pan over medium heat and stir until dissolved. Make sure the milk doesn’t boil or burn!

3. Add one or two spoons of the hot milk to the egg yolks and stir immediate. Then poor the egg yolk-mixture into the pan with milk and keep stirring on medium to low heat until the mixture thickens. Take the pan off of the heat and leave to cool for about 30 minutes.

4. After 30 minutes, take the egg whites and mix them until fluffy and stiff. Add 20 grams of sugar and mix again.

5. Use a spatula to stir the fluffy egg whites into the chocolate mixture.

6. Poor the eggnog into glasses (with a sugar rim) and top it with whipped cream and chocolate shavings. 

For anyone who doesn’t know how to make that pretty sugar rim on glasses: really all you need to do is dip the rim into water and then dip it into sugar. You can add cinnamon or cacao to the sugar beforehand to give it something extra!

While making these pictures I tested a new technique for the background. I used one big cloth for the bottom and the back of the picture. It’s a pretty odd setup and even though you can quite obviously see the creases of the cloth (if you look at the background and not the lovely drink), I was satisfied with the result. I thought it gave the pictures a nice feel. I hated the fact that I used glass though. To be fair, I insisted on using glass, because it would nicely show off the chocolate ‘mousse’ together with the whipped cream and it did look lovely. But once I took a picture: look at those reflections! They were everywhere! There was no way to get rid of them either! 

I hope you enjoyed my explorations of new recipes and photographing techniques and I’ll make sure to post more soon! For those reading this around Christmas (it is, I believe, a traditional Christmas drink): Merry Christmas!