Confession: I’m a chocoholic. It’s true. We all have skeletons in our closet and this one is mine. Seriously, any given week there is somewhere around three or four pounds of different varieties of chocolate in my house. Ranging in percentage to producer to country, I can’t get enough of the stuff. Also, being a child of the 80s, I love fantastic adjectives for things (see: radical). When you combine these two personality — let’s call them quirks — and my love of creating things from scratch to appeal to my particularly sensibilities, it’s no shock when you get a drink like the Extreme Chocolate Martini!

That’s right: extreme. We’re not talking a silly “ultimate,” “king” or even “the best” here. What we’re talking about is extreme! This Chocolate Martini goes to 11. That’s one better than ten.

What makes it extreme you might ask? Let me tell you. What we have here is a combination of crème de cacao, chocolate liqueur, chocolate sauce and cocoa powder. That’s right, I fitted it in every way that I could.

First things first, you’ve all made your own crème de cacao, right? If not, go do that, I’ll give you a couple of weeks to let that mature, then come back to this. Are we good?

Ok, moving on — we start with our crème de cacao. If you’re going with the homemade variety, then you already know the extra chocolate flavor that you have going for you. However, if you’ve decided not to make it (I’m not judging you…much), then go with the best quality dark variety you can find.

Next, we’re going to take some Godiva chocolate liqueur (because it’s the best that I could find). As a rule, I tend to try to get darker chocolate, and I’ve heard rumors that Godiva makes a dark chocolate liqueur, but I’ve never been able to find it (heck, I can’t even find mention of their booze on their site).

Finally, as your garnish in the glass, we’re going to have a chocolate sauce. Feel free to go with something easy from a jar or whatever you have around the house. However, if you really want to kick it up to the extreme level (and who doesn’t?) then take a 50/50 ratio of your favorite dark chocolate and heavy cream and melt them together. Now you have yourself a rich, thick, perfect for drizzling on the inside of your glass sauce. Bonus: you get to eat the rest that you don’t use. That’s a win/win right there.

The final two ingredients are vodka (for a little extra kick) and half and half (to round out that smooth, creamy texture).

Things that you might notice are missing: anything not supporting our chocolate cast. I love Baileys and other rich drinks, I’m a fan of Frangelico and its nutty flavors — there’s a whole lot of other things people like to mix into their Chocolate Martinis that they think will help, but it takes away from the chocolate-ness. For the Extreme Chocolate Martini, we ignore all of those and stick hard and fast to our chocolate for chocolate’s sake rule.

Now, onto the drink!

November 7th, 2014 | by morgan