Amp Up Your Next Breakfast With Some Delicious Caribbean Chocolate Tea

If you're looking for a super sweet way to start off your morning, look no further than Caribbean chocolate tea. This sweet-and-spiced beverage doesn't contain as much caffeine as coffee, but the flavor will delight your taste buds enough to energize you just the same.

To make this sweet beverage, boil some grated cocoa into a milk and water mixture — about a 50-50 blend of the two. Boil the liquid, and ensure that the grated cocoa is thoroughly blended in. Then, you can add in your preferred seasonings. Some common additions include cinnamon, vanilla, nutmeg, or ginger. To sweeten things up even more, finish off the recipe with the addition of some condensed milk or coconut milk.

In addition to being a delicious drink, there could be a few health benefits to be gained from it, too. Cocoa contains polyphenols, which could help lower blood pressure. Those polyphenols also act as an anti-inflammatory and can also be found in cinnamon, for some added benefits from the drink's seasonings.

The most important ingredient when it comes to prepping this drink is, of course, the cocoa. At first glance, this recipe may seem like a fancy version of hot chocolate, but the sourcing of the cocoa is actually an important distinction between the two. Caribbean chocolate tea generally uses cocoa balls, which are a little more difficult to find outside of the islands.

The Caribbean island of St. Lucia, for example, grows cocoa beans on plantations, which are then used to form cocoa balls. In other parts of the world, these may be spotted in international food stores, or ordered online. Some companies that sell these chocolate balls even pre-mix some spices in them, making preparation even easier when brewing your own Caribbean chocolate tea at home.

Alternatively, you may be able to find the cocoa formed into a stick shape, rather than a larger, round ball. This stick shape may be a little easier to hold and grate while using a microplane to prepare the drink.

Despite its name, this drink may not actually be classified as tea at all. Tea is typically brewed from leaves and this beverage contains none. The name instead comes from a Caribbean tradition of dubbing any hot breakfast beverage a tea, regardless of its ingredients.

The tradition of drinking this tea began back in 1833. Citizens of St. Lucia had a hard time finding tea leaves for their morning brews, so they had to get a little more inventive with their breakfast beverages. Cocoa was commonly produced on the island, making it an easier substitution for tea leaves, thus the drink was born out of necessity.

This rich drink is the perfect contrast to savory Caribbean breakfast dishes, like aloo choka — boiled potatoes with onion, ginger, and spices — or saltfish buljol, boiled and salted fish pieces blended with peppers, tomatoes, onions, and oil. Or, of course, it can be enjoyed just as a treat on its own if your sweet tooth is craving some chocolate.