Chocolat Charbonnel - Sea Salt Caramel - The Chocolate Drink (Waitrose) By @Cinabar

For those weird people that only drink hot chocolate at certain times of the year it is now their hot chocolate season. For me, a more consistent drinker of hot chocolate it is the time of the year when new flavours and varieties spring up. I remember having the original Charbonnel chocolate drink many years ago in a very posh cafe in Birmingham city centre called Hudsons, it was an epic posh place that we used to love going to for a treat. I bought some of their hot chocolate all those years ago and found it difficult to make and sort of never tried again. Sadly Hudson’s closed and that was the last time I had the drink.

I was looking at hot chocolate in Waitrose and spotted that there was a new edition of that drink this time flavoured with Sea Salt Caramel and as much for the nostalgia I decided to buy a box. Inside are flakes of hot chocolate which you mix with boiling water and top up with hot milk, yep it involved a pan/microwave and a kettle, I hadn’t remembered that. I mixed it up and to be fair with a bit of a whisk it all dissolved quite well. The drink is rather soothing, not overly sweet at all but also flavoursome. There is a gentle hunt of caramel and salt, which was milder than I thought it would be from the aroma, it was just a lovely grown up cocoa flavour. The twist was just enough to make it interesting and really moreish. I went from thinking it was too mild to knowing I would need to buy another box, this totally grew on me.

So, anyone else remember Hudson’s cafe in Birmingham?