This Genius Hack Turns Hot Cocoa Into Chocolate Mousse

Chocolate mousse is one of the easiest yet most delicious desserts you can make in a pinch. It's similar to chocolate pudding, but it's lighter. Similarly, hot cocoa is one of the coziest chocolatey drinks you can have during the cold winter months. So, naturally, the idea of combining the two sounds pretty ingenious. That's exactly what happened when one Reddit user placed their leftover hot chocolate in the fridge overnight.

The Reddit poster said, "the consistency was somewhere between whipped cream and pudding," which sounds a lot like chocolate mousse. The original poster went on to admit that the hot chocolate was a gourmet drinking chocolate from LA Burdick Handmade Chocolates in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They explained that this was actual chocolate that had been melted with milk and spices without anything else added in. It's this key point that allowed the hot chocolate drinker to unwittingly create chocolate mousse in the fridge overnight.

There are key components in common between hot chocolate and chocolate mousse that solve this riddle. But first, it is important to understand that hot cocoa is a mixture of cocoa powder, sugar, and milk, according to The Daily Meal. However hot chocolate, or "drinking chocolate," is chopped chocolate that melts as it is added to milk. To compare, chocolate mousse is made by melting chopped chocolate with heavy cream. Then, whipped cream is folded into the melted chocolate mixture to lighten it as it sets in the fridge (via The Kitchn).

Essentially, the hot chocolate that the Reddit poster placed in the fridge was a base of milk and chocolate very similar to that of chocolate mousse. Instead of having whipped cream folded in, though, it was simply chocolate dissolved into milk. That's why it ultimately created a texture that was right in between the two. So the next time you make hot chocolate, you can place any leftovers in the fridge and enjoy it as a chocolate dessert the next day. You could also reheat it to revive it to its former glory as drinking chocolate too.