Prepared hot chocolate can be purchased from a range of establishments, including cafeterias, fast food restaurants, coffeehouses and teahouses.

[3] To make the chocolate drink, which was served cold, the Maya ground cocoa seeds into a paste and mixed it with water, cornmeal, chili peppers, and other ingredients.

[3] An early Classic period (460-480 AD) Mayan tomb from the site of Rio Azul, Guatemala, had vessels with the Maya glyph for cacao on them with residue of a chocolate drink.

[7][8] The drink tasted spicy and bitter as opposed to sweetened modern hot chocolate,[5] and José de Acosta, a Spanish Jesuit missionary who lived in Peru and then Mexico in the later 16th century, described chocolate as: Loathsome to such as are not acquainted with it, having a scum or froth that is very unpleasant taste.

[9] Within Mesoamerica many drinks were made from cacao beans, and further enhanced by flowers like vanilla to add flavor.

Cups, gourds, cacao beans, as well as other things they acquired were listed in The Essential Codex Mendoza.

Additionally, cocoa was given as a dowry when members of the Spanish royal family married other European aristocrats.

"[14] In the late 17th century, Sir Hans Sloane, president of the Royal College of Physicians, visited Jamaica, where he was introduced to cocoa.

[14] The Spanish began to use jicaras made of porcelain in place of the hollowed gourds used by the natives.

[10] In 1828, Coenraad Johannes van Houten developed the first cocoa powder producing machine in the Netherlands.

[5][18] The press separated the greasy cocoa butter from cacao seeds, leaving a purer chocolate powder behind.

[19] According to tradition, the Italian version cioccolata calda was first born in Turin around 1560: to celebrate that the capital of the Duchy of Savoy was moved from Chambéry to Turin, Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy asked for a new beverage, and so this thicker, creamy version was created.

European hot chocolate tends to be relatively thick and rich, while in the United States the thinner instant version is consumed more often.

In mainland Europe (particularly Spain and Italy), hot chocolate is sometimes served very thick due to the use of a thickening agent such as cornstarch.

Sometimes sliced bread spread with butter, jam, honey, or Nutella is dunked into the hot chocolate.

In Colombia, a hot chocolate drink made with milk and water using a chocolatera and molinillo is enjoyed as part of breakfast with bread and soft, fresh farmer's cheese.

[38] In Peru, hot chocolate can be served with panettone at breakfast on Christmas Day, even though summer has already started in the southern hemisphere.

[38] Also numerous documents reveal medicinal uses of cacao throughout Central and South America in which different components of the tree are still used today, in the late 20th and early 21st century, including cacao bark, fat, flowers, fruit pulp and leaves.

It is made from tabliya (or tablea), tablets of pure ground roasted cacao beans, dissolved in water and milk.

[41] Tsokolate is commonly consumed at breakfast with traditional kakanin delicacies or pandesal and other types of bread.