Cacao infused Green tea and blueberry smoothie – extracted from Hotel Chocolat: A New Way of Cooking with Chocolate
Recipe: Cacao infused Green tea and blueberry smoothie
Ingredients
- 180 ml hot water (just off the boil)
- 2 bags Green tea
- 20 grams honey
- 300 grams fresh or frozen blueberries
- 472 ml plain yoghurt
- 10 ice cubes
- 20 grams cacao nibs
Instructions
- Pour the hot water over the teabags and nibs and allow to infuse for 3 minutes.
- Remove the teabags, stir in the honey.
- In a blender add the tea, the blueberries, yoghurt and ice cubes and blend until the ice has broken down completely. Pour into tall glasses.
Notes
Review: Hotel Chocolat – A new way of cooking with chocolate
This book, from the UK chocolate chain (with their own cocoa estate), introduces chocolate into many dishes where few cooks would have considered adding it. There are nine chapters: Plantation Breakfasts, Food for a Jump Up, Dark and Meaty, A Good Catch, Love Them and Leaf Them, To Die For, On the Veranda, Mixers and Shakers and The Pantry. Recipes that look interesting include: Plantation Power Bars, Chocolate Salted Caramel and Nut spread, Cocoa spiced beef satay, Rump steak burger with cocoa beer-braised onions, Chocolate balsamic glazed pork ribs, Chocolate chilli crusted salmon, cocoa gin cured salmon, plantation scones, truffle doughnuts, cocoa infusion tea, cocoa nib crispbread, and cocoa chilli oil.
There are over 100 recipes in the book, with some illustrated with full page photos. Most recipes take a full page, with detailed instruction. As well as the recipes, there are essays about other aspects of chocolate and Hotel Chocolat’s business: how chocolate is made, an introduction to their “Island Grower” program on St Lucia, The Cocoa Taste-o-Meter (showing how chocolate produced around the world tastes), as well as others. What comes through the essays is the ethics of the company (for various reasons high quality cocoa production is not certified as Fairtrade), but the majority quality chocolate companies – including Hotel Chocolat – do make sure that they treat their suppliers well and better than the Fairtrade regulations require.
Cooking with cocoa isn’t something we do that much of, especially the savoury recipes, but this book does open the door to some very interesting ideas, and may even provoke some ideas and experimentation ourselves. The book would also make an excellent present for a chocolate lover. And who doesn’t know one of those!
The Hotel Chocolate Cookbook is published by Headline, cover price £20
We received a copy of the Hotel Chocolate cook book to review.
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Gill Bland
What a great recipe Helen, thanks! I love cacoa nibs but I’ve only used them stewed up with hot milk for cocoa tea or sprinkled on porridge. I’ve been wondering how I could use them in a cold drink during summer, so I’ll have to try this. How much can you taste the green tea? I like it a lot in small amounts but I can’t cope with a lot of it.
ps. I also used them in a breadcrumb mixture to coat cubes of goats cheese and butternut squash – was rather ice, if a bit crumbly
Helen
Isn’t it a lovely recipe. Sadly not mine.