Tsokolate De Batirol

Who doesn’t love chocolates? We love it in whatever form it comes from. We’ve seen how versatile chocolates are because we use them not only for desserts but for any type of dish actually. In fact, if you haven’t heard about chocolates with bacon, well, welcome to earth! Some people have  even gotten so creative that they conceptualized and put up restaurants that serve all types of dishes using chocolates (Chocolate Fire for instance, which I shall write about in a future post).

However, at this age where we’ve become so advanced and creativity on chocolates has been raised to a higher level, wouldn’t it be nice to re-visit tradition and enjoy the simple pleasure of sipping a good cup of hot tsokolate de batirol?

It would not only satisfy your curiosity and craving. It will actually heal your soul. Ah, the power of chocolates! 🙂

Tsokolate Tablea

In a previous post, I mentioned about going to Mercato Centrale @ BGC where I got a tsokolate tablea batirol set for only P850. Here, I’m gonna show you how to make a perfect cup of hot chocolate using the batirol set.

Tablea is the Spanish word for tablet and tsokolate is the Filipino translation of chocolate. Tsokolate Tablea is a thick and rich hot chocolate drink made from cacao balls. Some of our history books would say the the Spaniards introduced the growing of cacao trees and developing the beans into cacao tablets in mid 17th century. During this era, hot chocolate made from the tableas was served during breakfast on very special occasions only.

The traditional way of making hot chocolate in the Philippines was through the use of batirol. It is actually a stirrer or whisk made of wood with a long solid handle and a spiky head. It’s the spiky head that does the extensive whisking action.

Sewing all the words together, what we actually mean by tsokolate de batirol is a hot chocolate drink made from real cacao balls using a wooden whisk 🙂

cacao balls from Davao

My family hails from the blessed Province of Batangas, our country’s pride when it comes to locally-produced organic Liberica and cacao beans. Our province produces some of the best cacaos in the Philippines owing to its suitable tropic weather. But having such familiarity with our own tsokolate, I am now more inclined towards discovering tsokolate from other parts of the Philippines like Davao.

If you read my posts, you’d remember that I blogged about Askinosie Chocolates, a small batch bean-to-bar chocolate maker based in Springfield, Missouri founded by Shawn Askinosie, a criminal defense lawyer. Their chocolates are sourced from three places: Mexico, Ecuador, and yes, Davao.

Let me now show you how to make tsokolate de batirol:

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup hot water
• 1 piece tsokolate tablea (I used Davao chocolates)
  
• condensed milk

For those in the United States, you can find tsokolate tablea at Filipino stores near you. Alternatively, you can use any real ground cacao, preferably those that came from at least 3 hours of grinding as this gives a good amount of cocoa butter that oozed out of the cocoa beans.

Drop your tsokolate tablea in a pot with 1/2 cup water. I used a pot made of brass.

Place the pot over medium heat and allow it to boil. Before it boils, do not stir the mixture. Just allow the tsokolate tablea to melt. When the mixture is already boiling, turn the heat to low and start stirring. The batirol or wooden stirrer is rubbed vigorously between the palms of the hand to foam the chocolate mix. As you do it, you will hear some swish-swoosh sound coming from the mixture. Hearing that sound alone is already therapeutic! 😛

 

Stir for a good 2 minutes. Add condensed milk depending on how sweet you like it to be. You can drink it as is for a dark to semi-sweet hot chocolate drink. In my case, I like it milky and sweet so I add 2 tablespoons of condensed milk. If  you don’t have condensed milk, you can add about 1/3 cup of whole milk and some brown sugar to taste. If you add milk, you have to stir again for another 2 minutes.

You may already consume it at this point or if you’re like me who want it smooth, you may use a fine strainer or improvise one using cheese cloth.

Pour over the hot drink on the strainer but be careful if you’re using an all-brass pot because you might forget that the handle is hot 😛 *guilty look*

You can also use your tsokolate tablea with glutinous rice and make chocolate rice porridge or champorado. Actually, I should do that one time and post it here.

For now, that’s my tsokolate de batirol. I hope you can try it at home too.

Enjoy! 🙂