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Chocolate Santafereño

Bogotá

🇨🇴 Colombia Drinks & Soups easy 5 min prep · 15 min cook serves 4 mugs 20 min start to table ~440 kcal per serving surprise

Hot chocolate with actual cubes of cheese melting at the bottom of the mug. In Bogotá this is not a stunt, it is breakfast.

Queso campesino tastes of little beyond salt and fresh milk, so it acts as a built-in savory counterweight to the sweet, spiced chocolate. The heat softens it into something stretchy rather than dissolving it, so the last spoonfuls are chocolate-soaked cheese, closer to fondue than garnish.

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The story

Santafereño means someone from Santa Fe de Bogotá, and this is the capital's drink: at 2,600 meters the city is chilly year-round, and spiced hot chocolate is daily fuel. The traditional method melts pastillas, chocolate tablets pressed with cinnamon and clove, in a tall chocolatera pot, then froths the drink with a wooden molinillo spun between the palms.

It appears at breakfast and at onces, the beloved between-meals snack, flanked by almojábanas, pandebono, or buttered bread, with slices or cubes of fresh cheese dropped straight into the cup. The local saying settles any debate: chocolate without cheese is like love without a kiss.

Fair warning: The cheese never dissolves, it softens into stretchy lumps you fish out with a spoon, and that texture in a drink is exactly the part first-timers balk at.
The recipe

Ingredients

  • 1 L (4 cups) whole milkor half milk, half water, a common Bogotá ratio
  • 125 g (4.4 oz) Colombian drinking chocolate tabletsabout 4 pastillas of Luker, Corona, or Sol; or 100 g dark chocolate plus 2 to 3 tbsp sugar
  • 1 cinnamon stickskip if your tablets are already spiced
  • 2 whole clovesoptional, skip if tablets are spiced
  • 200 g (7 oz) queso campesinoor low-moisture mozzarella, cut into 1 to 2 cm cubes
  • to taste panela or sugaronly needed with unsweetened chocolate

Method

  1. Put the milk, chocolate, cinnamon, and cloves in a saucepan, or a chocolatera if you have one, over medium-low heat.
  2. Heat gently, whisking now and then, until the chocolate has fully dissolved.
  3. Let it barely simmer for about 8 minutes so the spices infuse, watching that it does not boil over.
  4. Fish out the cinnamon and cloves, taste, and stir in panela or sugar if your chocolate is unsweetened.
  5. Froth hard with a molinillo or whisk, or blitz briefly in a blender, until a foamy cap forms.
  6. Drop 3 or 4 cubes of cheese into each mug.
  7. Pour the hot chocolate over and wait 1 to 2 minutes while the cheese softens and turns stretchy.
  8. Drink, then eat the chocolate-soaked cheese from the bottom with a spoon; that part is the point.
Shopping notes
Colombian chocolate tablets and queso campesino are at Latin American groceries; low-moisture mozzarella is the standard substitute because it melts stretchy without vanishing. Any bittersweet chocolate plus a cinnamon stick gets you close.
Cross-checked against: atlasobscura.com · curiouscuisiniere.com
Kitchen notes

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