Strawberry Hot Chocolate Frozen Dessert

Elaka's Strawberry Hot Chocolate is a layered frozen treat that puts two comforting treats together: fresh local strawberries and hot chocolate made with Videri Chocolate Factory's all-natural hot chocolate mix from Raleigh, North Carolina. Every layer carries a touch of cardamom. It's gluten-free, and it tastes like a chocolate-dipped strawberry that decided to become a frozen treat.

This one started with a simple idea: why choose between two favorite things when you can have both in the same spoonful? Here's the story behind the flavor, a little history of drinking chocolate, how we work with one of our favorite North Carolina makers, and how to enjoy it.

The story behind Strawberry Hot Chocolate

Our creator loves hot chocolate. Our creator also loves fresh strawberries. For a long time those were two separate joys. Strawberry Hot Chocolate is what happened when we stopped keeping them apart.

We make our hot chocolate layer with the all-natural Hot Chocolate Mix from Videri Chocolate Factory in Raleigh. Then we layer it with our fresh strawberry frozen treat, made with local strawberries, so every scoop catches a little of both. And because it's an Elaka flavor, it's all infused with cardamom, which adds a warm, slightly citrusy lift that makes the chocolate taste deeper and the strawberries taste brighter.

It's one of our collaboration flavors, and we're proud of that. Our recipes travel the world, but we source as close to home as we can, and working with North Carolina makers we love is a big part of who we are. You can read more about those partners on our Our Story page.

About Videri Chocolate Factory

Videri Chocolate Factory opened in downtown Raleigh in 2011. It's a bean-to-bar maker, which means the team starts with whole cocoa beans and does the roasting, grinding and refining themselves instead of melting down chocolate made somewhere else. Videri sources its beans from farmers in Central and South America, then sorts and roasts them in Raleigh.

Alongside chocolate bars and bonbons, Videri makes a hot chocolate mix, and that's the one we use. When you start with good chocolate, you don't need much else, which suits an all-natural brand like ours just fine.

A short history of drinking chocolate

Long before chocolate was a bar, it was a drink. Cacao comes from Mesoamerica, and people there were preparing drinks from it thousands of years ago. Historians give different dates for when it began, and sources range from around 1500 BCE to 500 BCE, but there's broad agreement that the Olmec, Maya and later the Aztecs all prized cacao.

Those early drinks were nothing like a mug of cocoa on a winter night. Ground cacao was often mixed with water, cornmeal and spices such as chili, left unsweetened, and poured from one vessel to another to raise a foam. Among the Aztecs, it was a drink closely tied to nobility and celebration.

Chocolate reached Spain in the 1500s. Accounts differ on exactly how and when it first arrived, but in Europe it was sweetened and served hot, and over the next couple of centuries it spread across the continent. By the 17th century, chocolate houses were fashionable in London. Hot chocolate as most of us know it today grew out of that long history.

Spices and chocolate have kept good company the whole way, which is part of why cardamom feels so at home in our version.

What it tastes like

Think of it in two voices. The hot chocolate layer is rich, smooth and cocoa-forward, the kind of chocolate flavor that tastes like a cozy afternoon. The strawberry layer is fresh, fruity and a little bright. Spoon straight down through both and you get the whole picture: berry, chocolate, and a soft warmth from the cardamom at the end.

Kids love it because it's strawberry and chocolate. Grown-ups love it because it's strawberry and chocolate. It's that kind of flavor.

Key ingredients: fresh local strawberries and Videri hot chocolate with cardamom.

Dietary: gluten-free. Our badges describe the ingredients in each flavor and are not a promise that a product is free of any allergen, so please check the label on your pack every time and contact us with any allergy questions before you order.

How to serve and pair it

With fresh strawberries on top. Slice a few ripe berries over a bowl and double down on the fruit layer. Simple, pretty and very hard to argue with.
Next to a mug of hot chocolate. Yes, really. A small scoop alongside a warm mug turns a cold evening into an event. Let the scoop sit on a spoon over the mug for a few seconds and enjoy the hot-and-cold contrast.
Side by side with Rose. Chocolate, strawberry and rose make a wonderful trio. Serve it with our Rose for a dessert plate that feels like a celebration. Rose contains nuts, so label it for guests.

Where to find Strawberry Hot Chocolate

Order a Strawberry Hot Chocolate 4-pack, or choose it in a mix and match 4-pack from all flavors. It's in three of our curated packs, more than any other flavor in this lineup:

Carolina Made: with Carolina Peach Sonker, Jinn's Peanut Unda and Q'ahwa, every flavor leaning on our home state.
Family Favorites: with Z's Lemonade, Plantain and Rose, for the whole table.
Midnight Cravings: with Kulfi, Vanilla Milk and Rose, for late-night spoon raids.

Every order ships frozen on dry ice. See how shipping works. If you love supporting North Carolina makers, our North Carolina road trip guide is full of them.