2 Spices Make Store-Bought Ice Cream Taste Like Mexican Hot Chocolate

There's something particularly comforting about a Mexican hot chocolate. It's deep and rich on the palate, with a spicy zing that Mexican cuisine is known for. Like a lot of Mexican flavors, it combines ingredients that you might consider novel — sweet, savory, and spicy, all in one. However, they blend together beautifully. If you're in the mood for a simple and delicious dessert with an added kick, we recommend adding Mexican hot chocolate spices to your ice cream.

All you need is chocolate ice cream and a couple of ingredients that you probably already have at home: ground cinnamon and ground chile powder. We recommend choosing a nice, premium ice cream, or you can make it from the ground up, starting with a chocolate version of a simple three ingredient, no churn ice cream. Simply top your ice cream with a light dusting of cinnamon and chile powder. The cinnamon adds depth and a light tartness to the chocolate while the chile will give a nice punch of spice that's quickly mellowed out by the cold, milky ice cream — you can even add a dash of salt for extra complexity. It's a simple trick that will add some elegance to your next dinner party or family meal.

Once you've toed the sweet and spicy waters with chile and chocolate ice cream, you may be inclined to dive in head first. After all, sweet and spicy's rebrand has taken over the culinary scene for a reason, so you're bound to see "swicy" everywhere. If you're looking for similar flavors, but want something hot out of the oven, try this Mexican hot chocolate cake recipe with chipotle and ancho chile powders. You can even jazz up some salted caramel brownies with a heavy dash of cayenne.

If you're not much of a chocolate fan, hot honey can be a nice addition to some other things that we normally consider strictly sweet. Add hot honey to your morning lattes or spice up the holidays and use it to elevate your boxed cornbread. For another great twist on a holiday classic, give your apple sauce a spicy kick with a dash of cayenne pepper.

Combining sweet, spicy, and salty flavors together will activate more olfactory receptors, and the reaction to the spicy capsaicin from the chiles releases both endorphins and dopamine in your brain for that sweet, sweet feeling of contentment. Incorporating a little dash of spice in your sweet recipes can be the easy addition you need to move from at-home cook to chef in residence.