If you’re a huge fan of the combination of chocolate and orange, this cocktail would be a treat for you. Chocolate orange cocktail isn’t something you see everyday in a bar menu. However, you could ask your bartender for an off-the-menu special.

Chocolates and oranges were made equally delicious by the culinary gods and, well, Mother Nature.

Chocolates were at first, made to be in their original form meaning dark without the addition of milk and sugar. However, when chocolate started to become very popular, people started to play with different ingredients that you could add to it. Chocolate turned into this number one loved dessert by all, sweet, creamy, yet rightly bitter.

Orange on the other hand has always been something extremely refreshing. Orange is the sweeter citrus fruit that we love to eat alone, turn into fresh juice, or add to sweet and savory food.

The combination of the two turned into such a delicious mix, creating a push and pull of sweetness, citrus, darkness, and all the undertones that come with both ingredients. These two were made for each other.

Table of Contents

What makes a cocktail, a cocktail?

Before anything else, let’s go back to basics. What is a cocktail, anyway?

According to the dictionary, a cocktail is an iced wine or liquor with added flavorings. It does make sense because the cocktails we know today are defined by ice, a liquor, and probably a juice or something else.

However, this definition of a cocktail is something bartenders and liquor connoisseurs would appreciate more. “Cocktail is a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters.” This definition was taken from The Balance and Columbian Repository of 1806.

Today, the cocktails that we know are a mixture of any spirit, some form of sugar whether it is a sugar cube, sugar syrup, or honey, water, and bitters. The most perfect example of a cocktail based on this definition is an Old Fashioned or a Negroni.

What changes if you shake a cocktail vs. stirring it?

“A martini. Shaken. Not stirred.” is the famous line of James Bond, particularly Sean Connery. We love this line and it has stuck to our pop culture book of references ever since.

What happens if a cocktail is shaken and not stirred anyway? What’s the difference?

Shaking and stirring are two very different methods of mixing a cocktail. When you shake, you create air and texture. When you stir, you equally mix ingredients together. There are some cocktails that do not require to be shaken but need to be stirred instead, and vice versa.

If you’re mixing drinks like martinis, Manhattans, Old Fashion, and Negroni, you should stir them to create an even mix between all the ingredients. To shake these drinks means to create unwanted texture. Shaking won’t create such a huge difference but if you’re a purist, you would be baffled as to why these drinks would be shaken.

However, there are some cocktails that SHOULD be shaken. These are cocktails that have citrus, herbs, cream, or egg whites in them. One of the reasons why these are added to drinks is so that they would be infused into the liquor. To stir it would have a lack of flavor from these ingredients.

Ingredients

The base of our cocktail is gin. It is the liquor that will carry out the flavors of chocolate and orange.

Cointreau or Grand Marnier

Cointreau and Grand Marnier are liqueurs that were made for sweet cocktails, particularly those that include orange and chocolate. You can choose any of these two for your Chocolate Orange Cocktail.

Orange Bitters

You can get orange bitters from your local liquor shop.

Dark Chocolate

Make sure to use your favorite dark chocolate for this cocktail to make the experience more enjoyable.

Orange Peel

This is for garnish and to perfume the glass with orange. It’s all part of the experience.

Tips and Tricks for Chocolate Orange Cocktail

For the orange peel: Do not peel too deep

Like other citrus fruits, the main rule of using their peels is not to cut too deep into the fruit that you would see the 2nd layer of white skin. That makes things too bitter. All you need is the skin.

Stir the cocktail, not shake.

Since this cocktail contains citrus but in bitters form, it’s best to stir it rather than shake. You only need to shake when you’re trying to extract flavors from raw ingredients into the cocktail.