Warming up on a snowy night with some real hot chocolate

With snow in our local forecast for Wednesday night into Thursday, I knew it would be a night of not doing much outside of catching up on some television and maybe some blog posts.

I don’t know what made me think of it — maybe the first significant snowfall we’ve seen in two years — but I got the urge for some hot chocolate. I’ve never been a coffee drinker (I know, odd for somebody who worked in newspapers), so my “cold weather” drinks of choice have always been hot chocolate or tea.

One thing I miss about not living in a place bigger than my current town is the ability to run to the local Dunkin’ Donuts to grab a hot chocolate. I may not always look to go to those places for the unhealthy (but yummy) food, but I love the hot chocolate. I would rather a sugar free version, but sometimes you have to splurge.

I wasn’t about to brave heading out for a 20-mile ride over curvy and hilly roads for hot chocolate from Dunkin’ Donuts, however. That meant I was looking at the sugar free Swiss Miss I have handy. But I wanted a bit more.

Google saved me.

I did a search for a single-serving of hot chocolate to see what I could come up with. Most of the recipes I saw were quite easy, so I needed to dig around to see what was available to use. It turns out I needed a few things, so off I went to the local grocery store. As I was sweeping off the car, I figured we were just shy of two inches of snow and it was still coming down.

The forecast is calling for anywhere from 4 to 12 inches, depending on the area and the source — the National Weather Service, The Weather Channel or the local television news. Turns out we got about 6 or so inches. At least that’s what it seemed like when snow blowing this stuff.

I intend, at some point in the future when I’m a little more on my feet and back working and such, to do some “foodie” things with this blog. Believe me, it won’t be a food blog by any means — but it will be more along the lines of things I’m eating and such. But that’s in the future.

This post is something along those lines as I want to share this hot chocolate experience and my thoughts.

I ended up buying the Hershey’s cocoa because it was only 40 cents more expensive than the store brand. It also had a similar recipe on the container to the one I had found online.

Score!

When I got home, I opted to use the recipe on the Hershey’s container, with some slight tweaks.

Here’s the recipe:

• 2 Tbsp. sugar
• 2 Tbsp. cocoa
• A dash of salt
• 1 cup of milk
• 1/4 tsp. vanilla extract

Mix the sugar, cocoa and salt in a mug. They say to microwave the milk on high for 1-1 1/2 minutes or until hot. However, I did it the old fashioned way — on the stove. Then slowly add the hot milk into the mug and stir well. Stir in the vanilla extract.

I used Equal instead of sugar and it was fine. I also probably had 9 ounces of milk, rather than the cup (8 ounces) it called for.

It wasn’t a bad recipe. I think it could actually be good, pending some tweaks. Tasting it, I thought it was extremely chocolatey.  I liken it to a hot chocolate I got at Starbucks a few years ago. It had an extremely strong chocolate taste, almost making it a big stronger than needed.

I will be trying this again soon. The tweaks I will make include:

• Likely 1 to 1 1/2 Tbsp. of cocoa
• Likely a cup and a half or so of milk — I want to fill the mug

In the end, it was pretty successful. Using the Equal helped me cut down on the sugar, which I’m always looking to do. I think if it has a slightly lighter taste, it will be a definite keeper.

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