pink pepper hot chocolate

The Missing Ingredient Challenge: pink peppercorns

Pink peppercorns look like regular peppercorns and have a peppery flavour, but are not actually related to regular peppercorns. These pinkish-red dried berries can often be found in gourmet stores or bulk food stores (where I found my supply) and are sometimes even found mixed in with regular peppercorns. When Erin from www.foodiepages.ca asked me to use pink peppercorn in my next post for the "The Missing Ingredient" series I was a little nervous - this was something I had never really even heard of before! I mean, I remember seeing a few pink/reddish peppercorns in my pepper mill, but I was supposed to create something with them?

I experimented with a few different tastes by taking recipes I've used before and substituting pink peppercorns into them as the main flavour. This one ended up as one of our favourites – it’s a savoury twist to the always popular hot chocolate.

pink pepper hot chocolate

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ingredients:

1 teaspoon pink peppercorns
1 cup 10% cream
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons chocolate syrup
whipped cream (optional)

directions:

Using a mortar and pestle (I improvised and used a cutting board, parchment paper and a mallet), lightly crush the peppercorns.

In a small saucepan, heat the cream, sugar and crushed peppercorns on medium-low heat, whisking occasionally. Once the mixture starts to simmer, pour the mixture through a strainer to remove the crushed peppercorns.

Return the mixture to the saucepan and continue heating on low. Whisk in the chocolate syrup. Continue heating and whisking for another 5 minutes.

Pour the hot chocolate into a cup and top with whipped cream (optional).

Yields: 1 cup