The Chocolaty Drink You Need for Fall

Creating hexagonal pucks of drinking chocolate is, somehow, more complicated than it sounds. As a chocolate maker—rather than a chocolatier, who crafts confections with already-made chocolate—Ashley Ugarte roasts imported Mexican cacao beans herself. Then, in a tiny North Austin prep kitchen, she uses modern machinery to grind them and later temper the chocolate until it becomes thick and shiny. About half the sales at her company, Hijita, come from drinking chocolates. For those, she sticks to tradition and uses a molino, a grinder typically employed to make masa.Milling roasted cacao nibs into a thick paste releases a sweet and earthy fragrance that reminds Ugarte of growing up on both sides of the Texas-Mexico border, where her fascination with chocolate began. Whether at her grandmother’s house in…

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