When you want a warm cup of hot chocolate with a little caffeine, make espresso hot chocolate!

Kind of like my dirty chai latte, the espresso hot chocolate is a mix of two of my favorite drinks.

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Instead of chai and espresso in a dirty chai latte, this drink has hot chocolate and espresso. Both combinations are delicious.

Making an espresso hot chocolate is really simple and you have a few options for variations too.

To make it, we’ll heat milk on the stove top and add in pieces of a chocolate bar while brewing espresso. Then we’ll put both liquids together and top it with whipped cream, cocoa powder and a piece or two of the chocolate bar just for fun.

You can use different milks and types of chocolate depending on your preference. We’ll go into a little more detail and list some ideas below.

Espresso Hot Chocolate Ingredients

¼ cup espresso (I used a French Vanilla flavored coffee)
1 cup milk
½ Hershey’s chocolate bar (about ½ cup)
Optional: marshmallows, whipped cream, cocoa powder

Tips for Making Espresso Hot Chocolate

Espresso

Espresso is made when hot water is pressurized through tightly packed and finely ground coffee beans. The water becomes a really concentrated coffee. To apply the right pressure, you need to use an espresso machine.

However, if you don’t have an espresso machine at home, a close option is a stove top moka pot, which I used in this recipe. It also yields a concentrated coffee.

If you don’t have an espresso machine or moka pot at home, check out our guide to making espresso without an espresso machine.

As for the beans, I would usually go with whole bean coffee and grind it myself, but for this recipe I decided to use a pre ground flavored coffee.

Feel free to use your favorite coffee that isn’t flavored. I just wanted to mix the taste of French Vanilla with the chocolate, so I used a French Vanilla flavored ground coffee.

Milk

I made my espresso hot chocolate non dairy so I used oat milk.

You can feel free to use any milk or plant based milk of choice.

And if you prefer a thicker hot chocolate, you can replace ½ of the milk with heavy cream. So use ½ cup milk and ½ cup heavy cream or whipping cream instead of 1 cup of milk.

Chocolate

I used Hershey’s Special Dark chocolate bars.

Each bar is about 8 ounces. I found that half of the bar was a perfect amount of chocolate flavor for the espresso hot chocolate.

If you prefer other chocolates like milk chocolate, you can use that instead too. You could even try this with white chocolate and make this an espresso hot white chocolate drink.

Toppings

Hot chocolate always goes with marshmallows, which you can add to this espresso hot chocolate.

Or you can try something else and add whipped cream and cocoa powder like I did.

There are so many combinations and types of milk, chocolate and toppings you can use so you can find what works to your preference and you also won’t ever get bored of this drink.

How to Make Espresso Hot Chocolate

Brew espresso. I used a moka pot. (I used French Vanilla flavored coffee for a slight vanilla flavor to complement the chocolate.)
Heat milk over the stove top.
Break the chocolate bar into smaller pieces. Add chocolate pieces into the milk.
Stir until the chocolate dissolves in the milk.
Pour espresso and chocolate milk into a mug.
Optional: Top with marshmallows or whipped cream and cocoa powder.

In pictures…