Without further ado~ The third drink of my thirty day book as a beverage series is a hot dark cocoa with golden whipped cream, topped with baked marshmallows and walnuts. This drink was inspired by The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab! This book coincidentally is celebrating its fifth year anniversary this week, which is insane to me as I distinctly remember picking it up at the bookstore when it dropped like it was yesterday. What do you mean it’s been five years?
You know, I’ve actually been doing a good job of cranking out these beverages every day. The issue has been actually taking the time to convert my sloppy post-it notes and camera roll into an organized recipe and polished images to share with any who may be interested. But I hope as time goes on, I’ll become a well-oiled machine.
The cover is fairly colorless (but oh so beautiful) so I had to work with the only two that were incorporated, and that’s the black and gold.
This beverage’s name is:
‘rocky rue’
Name Explained: Considering one of the book’s settings is France. I decided to use the word rue which means street or road in French and took inspiration from rocky road for the name and flavors resulting in a rocky rue. Rocky road tends to consist of chocolate, marshmallows, and nuts so all of those elements were present in the drink!
Golden Turmeric Whipped Cream: Getting a bright gold naturally was going to be difficult, and the first ingredient that came to mind was turmeric. Too much of it would be almost orange in color so I didn’t need much. It also packs quite a lot of flavor so I added some cinnamon to slightly add to the flavor profile. The addition of black pepper – for those unfamiliar – was to enhance curcumin absorption, which is the active compound in turmeric. Don’t worry, you can’t taste it!
Hot Black Cocoa: Similar to the gold, black was also a difficult natural color to come up with and my two options were cocoa and charcoal. The former seemed like a much more delicious option. It was my first time using black cocoa. I believe I’ve seen it mostly used in baking, but it tasted and worked like any other cocoa when making hot chocolate so that was a pleasant surprise that made my mission easier. I felt like a witch brewing it on the stove as it did get extremely dark.
RATING: Overall I’d give the drink a 4.25.
Flavor Combination: I did not add any sweetener to the golden whipped cream because I was expecting the cocoa to be fairly sweet and rich in flavor. While the cocoa was rich it wasn’t as sweet as I expected, despite the addition of chocolate chips and honey, so the cream itself did taste quite healthy, haha. This could be offset by taking a bite of the marshmallow when taking a sip of the drink – I think that helped to bring all of the flavors together.
Ease: The only time consuming part of the assembly was warming the cocoa on the stove. If anyone were to use a microwave then the ease meter would slide all the way down. The cream came together in the frother so there wasn’t much labor needed there. And the marshmallows were in and out of the oven in a flash, so no component of the drink took too long.
Appearance: Since I was going to use marshmallows anyway for the rocky road flavor inspiration, I got the idea of roasting them in the oven in case the golden whipped cream wasn’t gold enough. I did use vegan ones, so that may have affected their final color/texture when compared to how regular ones could have come out. But the color match was thankfully as I’d intended, and very close to the book’s cover. The only issue I had was when assembling the drink; the cocoa kind of seeped into the edges of the cream, and I would’ve preferred a cleaner golden top, but perhaps that’s the perfectionist in me jumping out once again. So I docked a quarter off of the score for that.
Ways to Improve: I don’t think I’d personally change anything about the drink. I didn’t rate it too highly simply because I’m not the biggest chocolate fan, so halfway through the drink the cocoa was a bit heavy for me to finish. Also the overall portion size was quite massive. I think a half portion would’ve been perfect, but chocolate lovers will probably rejoice, haha.
Here’s the spreadsheet for all of the tools and ingredients used:
I’ve also provided the information below for added ease~
Cups (close alternative): https://amzn.to/4ohZMCV
Whole Milk (exact): https://tgleedairy.com/products/whole-milk-plastic-quart/
Dark Chocolate Chips (exact): https://amzn.to/43cyG80
Vanilla Paste (exact): https://amzn.to/4nM0jxf
Honey (close alternative): https://www.traderjoes.com/home/products/pdp/multi-floral-clover-honey-030296
Black Cocoa (exact): https://amzn.to/46JQpGg
Heavy Whipping Cream (exact): https://www.publix.com/pd/publix-whipping-cream-heavy/RIO-PCI-112684
Turmeric Powder (exact): https://amzn.to/47kuGEX
Ceylon Cinnamon (close alternative): https://amzn.to/3J36UUN
Black Pepper (exact): https://amzn.to/3VWnAjL
Vegan Marshmallows (exact): https://amzn.to/3KS0Bnv
Walnuts (exact): Trader Joe’s California Premium Walnut Halves (could not find a link for some reason, sorry! But any walnuts, slightly crushed, should suffice!)
Frother (exact): https://amzn.to/3KS1c8J
Here’s a quick video showing how I made the drinks:
For the three drinks done so far, the current rankings are as follows:
Thanks for reading, hope everyone has a great weekend!
~ C.C.
aureate & aromatic 
Leave a comment