A few days ago, I had a cocktail called "Winter queen". It may have been a specialty of the place where I had it, I couldn't find any recipe for it when I searched for it. The menu listed it as "a hot chocolate beverage with rum, topped with cream".

Based on the taste, I can say that the thing had rather low alcohol content, but the rum aroma was fairly strong. Also, I am not sure what liquid they used for the chocolate "beverage" - there must have been some milk in it, but I don't think it was straight full-fat milk. I suspect that it also had other spices, maybe some vanilla, and it was slightly sweet, but not oversweetened. The cream was only a swirl of whipped cream from a NO-bottle, with some chocolate-deco sprinkles on top.

I tried to copy it at home, but couldn't get the same result. I started with semi-sweet chocolate, melted with sweetened milk, added vanilla aroma, a pinch of salt, and Bacardi Gold rum. With a small amount of rum, it didn't have enough taste. When I added more rum, it got very bitter and alcoholic. Also, something with the fat content wasn't right - the original drink was less rich, but still quite smooth, unlike water-based hot chocolate.

Should I have tried to do it some other way? Did I use the wrong rum? Would it have helped to cook the rum first, so some of the alcohol evaporates? Is there a better way to mix it? And what about the smooth-without-fat problem?