Hot Cocoa

Before he went on the Modified Atkins Diet, CJ loved sweets. They've been particularly difficult for him to give up, so in order to help him feel like he's not completely deprived, we've been working on coming up with ZERO carb alternatives for sweets. (Trying to save as many of those limited carbs as possible to get important nutrients from vegetables.) Because hot chocolate is a drink and "sweets" we really wanted it to be zero carbs.  Finally we've found the right ingredients to achieve zero carb hot chocolate. This particular recipe is more a guideline, we use exclusively zero carb ingredients, so it's about finding the right combination of these ingredients to suit your own taste.

Please note: Not all ingredients are created equal, check out our product recommendation page for specific information about brands we know to be zero carb and for easily accessable nutrition information on low carb products.


Without further ado...

Zero Carb Hot chocolate!

Start by warming on the stove top: 1/2 cup heavy cream and 1 1/2 cups of Almond Milk. (1)

(Be careful NOT to let this get to a boil, when allowed to boil, a gross film rises to the surface that needs to be skimmed off, best to avoid.)

Next we add a little bit ( 1-2 tablespoons) of coffee. (2) This isn't so much to add the flavor of coffee, but to highten the richness of the chocolate. (though feel free to add more coffee, less cream/almond milk if you want something closer to Mocha.)

Add about 1/4 cup of unsweetened cocoa powder, (3) whisk to disolve. (Add more or less depending on preferences of richness, remember the coffee will increase the chocolate's intensity.)

This next part is really about personal preference, this is sweetness and flavor. The following are a couple of
Stevia flavors that we've used, feel free to experiment with your own flavors (peppermint hot chocolate, anyone?)

Vanilla

Cinnamon

Caramel 

Toffee

The thing to remember with stevia, is when used in large quantities, it can have a bitter after taste, if you want really sweet hot chocolate, consider using a half packet of splenda (.25 carbs) in combination with approximately 4 drops of the the liquid stevia, the stevia increases the sweetness of splenda. Another option for flavoring if you wish to avoid the stevia altogether and substitute your own sweetner, you can use unsweetened, concentrated flavor drops. There is a lot more variety with these.

   Finally heavy cream is zero carb, and when beaten with any zero carb sweetner (and if you desire flavor) makes up an easy zero carb whipped cream.

Pour cocoa into mug, top with whipped cream and enjoy your zero carb hot cocoa!

 (To this cup we also added zero carb baking chocolate curls for a special touch!)

(1.) We found that doing less heavy cream more almond milk was more cost effective and reduced the feeling of the cream coating the inside of the mouth.

(2.) We have found that caffeine seems to correlate with CJ's seizure activity, so we use decaf coffee.

(3.) Brand is REALLY important with Cocoa powder, as most brands have 1-5 carbs per two tablespoons, we use Equal Exchange Organic Baking Cocoa, it is the ONLY zero carb baking cocoa I have found, if you have another one, let me know! (Again the information on all ingredients we use in our recipes is available on our product recommendations page.)