What Makes Italian Hot Chocolate So Thick And Luscious

Pumpkin spice lattes and apple cider may be autumn's official beverages, but once the snow starts to fall, it's time to switch over to hot chocolate. According to a 2020 YouGov poll, it was far and away the most popular wintertime beverage among American adults, and if you add in kids, the numbers are likely much higher. (Children aren't usually big fans of eggnog, which took the number two spot.) Chocolate is a universal pleasure, though, so it comes as no surprise to find that the drink is also popular in other countries such as Italy. Of course, Italian-style hot chocolate is made a little differently from the typical American version in that it tends to be a great deal thicker — in fact, if you order ciocolata calda at an Italian restaurant, you will find yourself with a decadent, creamy, and deeply flavored hot chocolate you can eat with a spoon.

One explanation why cioccolata calda is so thick is that it's mostly (but not always) made with melted chocolate, either instead of or in addition to cocoa powder. It also tends to call for a smaller amount of milk than American hot chocolate. Cioccolata calda may even include a thickening agent such as cornstarch, which can lend it a somewhat pudding-y consistency. It frequently contains less sugar than American hot chocolate, as well, and the melted dark chocolate gives it a slight, pleasantly bitter edge, but what it lacks in sweetness it makes up for in richness.

Italy isn't the only country to prefer thick hot chocolate. Spanish chocolate caliente (which is also popular with Cubans) is often thickened with cornstarch, as is a German-Swiss-Austrian drink called dicke schokolade (which translates to thick chocolate). French hot chocolate, too, is quite the luxurious experience, although it may omit the cornstarch and stick with melted chocolate blended with milk and cream. Italian and other European-style drinking chocolate can sometimes be found at American coffee shops and bakeries. In fact, a now-closed NYC establishment called The City Bakery used to hold an annual February festival where it sold hot chocolate so rich it coated your spoon. (Alas, the festival, which started in the '90s, is long gone, but our copycat recipe lives on.)

Don't expect to see such a drink at Starbucks anytime soon, though, since they tried selling European-style drinking chocolate 20 years ago and it flopped pretty hard. If your memory doesn't go back quite that far, the chain introduced a short-lived Italian-style sipping chocolate called Chantico in 2005 that came in a now-forgotten six-ounce cup size. This drink seems to have resembled a cornstarchless cioccolata calda, although some copycat recipes do call for cornstarch. Chantico never really caught on with customers, though, and was pulled from the menu in under a year. One reason for its failure may be that it couldn't be customized like Starbucks' coffees. The whopping calorie count might have contributed, too, since nearly 400 calories for a tiny cup is kind of a bummer. What's more, it wasn't to everyone's taste — I, for one, found it to be like drinking warm, sugary mud.