Chocolate Almond Cocktail

Did you know that February, apart from containing Valentine's Day, is also National Chocolate Lovers Month? Personally, we celebrate chocolate lovers month every month so it's not like we'd notice the difference. But these are still two very good reasons to celebrate and celebrations call for a cocktail. Yes, of course, it's a chocolate cocktail.

Almonds are native to the Middle East and are a classic staple ingredient in the cuisine. We use them often in both sweet and savory dishes. And since they go so well with chocolate, why not in a cocktail as well? Recipe testing cocktails is not exactly difficult work, but we do try to plan out what flavors we think will work together. The rest is usually just figuring out proportions to get a good balance. We gave my drink three layers of chocolate and 2 layers of almond flavor with a little bit of dairy for smoothness and a bit of ​vodka to knock back the sweetness and give it a little more kick. Cocktails should have a kick, don't you think?

We used creme de cacao which is a common mixer and then added some richness with the chocolate ice cream. The glass got a rim of melted chocolate and we went with semi-sweet to keep the sugar level down. We love almond liqueur but we mostly use it as an after-dinner drink or nightcap as opposed to a mixer. But it's a great addition to any chocolate cocktail. Good salty roasted almonds got chopped up and added to the rim so that each sip gets a bit of sweet, a bit of salt, a good amount of chocolate and almond flavors and a nice kick. Definitely, the right cocktail to celebrate love, chocolate or otherwise, this month. Cheers!