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Recipes Specially Prepared by Miss Elizabeth Kevill Burr(All measurements should be level.)
Cracked Cocoa
To one-third a cup of Baker's Cracked Cocoa (sometimes called "Cocoa Nibs") use three cups of cold water; cook slowly at least one hour--the longer the better. Then strain the liquid and add one cup (or more if desired) of milk, and serve very hot. Do not allow the mixture to boil after milk has been added.
A cocoa-nib infusion rather than a cup of drinking chocolate: the nibs give up flavor and aroma to water over a long, gentle simmer, and the solids are strained out. Treat it more like coffee than like hot cocoa.
- What cracked cocoa is"Cracked cocoa" and "cocoa nibs" are roasted cacao beans broken into coarse pieces, hull removed. Modern raw or lightly roasted nibs sold for baking work, but roasted nibs give a rounder, less astringent brew.
- QuantitiesOne-third cup nibs to three cups cold water, with a cup or more of milk added after straining. The finished volume depends entirely on how much water boils away during the hour; expect somewhere between two and four cups.
- Start cold and keep it lowThe nibs go into cold water and come up slowly; a bare simmer for an hour or more extracts flavor without driving off the aromatics. A hard boil makes for a harsher, more astringent cup.
- Cover the potThe original does not say so, but an hour of open simmering will reduce three cups considerably. Keep a lid on, or top up with hot water to bring the volume back before straining.
- StrainingA fine mesh sieve catches the nibs; lining it with cheesecloth or using a coffee filter also removes the fine sediment and the fat slick, if you want a clearer cup.
- Do not boil after the milkThis is the one instruction that matters. Milk added to a hot cocoa infusion will catch on the bottom of the pan and throw a skin the moment it boils. Bring the mixture just to steaming.
- SweeteningNone is called for, and the drink is genuinely bitter without it. Sugar dissolves best while the strained liquid is still hot, before the milk goes in.
- Reusing the nibsSpent nibs still hold flavor; a second, weaker infusion is possible, though the result is thin. They can also be dried and used in baking.
Walter Baker & Company of Dorchester, Massachusetts, sold cocoa in several forms at the turn of the twentieth century, and cracked cocoa was the least processed of them: whole roasted beans broken up, with none of the pressing that produced cocoa powder or the added sugar of eating chocolate. Because the fat stays locked in the bean fragments, the nibs cannot be whisked into a smooth drink the way powder can, so they were brewed and strained instead, and the result was treated as a lighter, more digestible alternative to thick chocolate. Recipes of this kind appeared in company booklets. The same nibs are back in kitchens now, though mostly scattered over baked goods rather than simmered for an hour.