Chocolate for One: Hot Chocolate

Happy Halloween, everyone!

I love Halloween. I love the chance to dress up in costumes that I would never wear the rest of the year, I love the chance to eat chocolate candies, and I love pumpkins and pumpkin cookies. In years past, I would celebrate by attempting to make a pumkin cake shaped like a ghost, which I would try to cover with a fondant sheet, which would fall apart under its own weight and leave fondant and frosting and crumbs plastered across my kitchen floor, and then I would give up and head out to a Halloween party to dance the night away.

Now, while France is aware of Halloween, it isn't really celebrated around here, and those of us who do want to celebrate the holiday need to make it work as best we can and just ignore the funny looks if we end up wearing our costumes on the trams. I found a Halloween party to attend, but this party lacked both chocolate and pumpkin baked goods. The lack of pumpkin I can almost forgive, but not the lack of chocolate. Not in Switzerland. Unforgivable. So I woke up today needing to right this wrong and seriously craving chocolate.

And this is why this post is headed by a picture that has nothing to do with Halloween. Allow me to introduce my favorite way to address chocolate cravings for most of the year: hot chocolate.



Go figure that you can't find hot chocolate mix around here either. You can find Nesquik-style drink mixes, but making hot chocolate from those would require heating up milk, and if you're going to take that trouble there are far better things to do to assuage/beat into submission for the next week any chocolate cravings.

So, I make my own mix.

Hot chocolate mix--combine equal parts of the follow:
powdered milk
powdered coffee creamer
cocoa powder
sugar

Store in an air-tight container. To use, add a heaping tablespoon (or however much you want) to a mug of almost boiling water. Feel free to play around with the ingredients. French vanilla and hazelnut coffee creamers are fun, and you can add crushed peppermint candies or cinnamon or chocolate shavings or little marshmallows or whatever else you like in your hot chocolate. I would recommend against using powdered sugar, as the corn starch gives the mix an aftertaste, and to demonstrate just how much of a chocolate snob Switzerland turns one into, I will offer that I prefer a blend of natural and dutched cocoa powders that favors the dutched cocoa.

Or you can use Hershey's special dark cocoa powder. That works, too.

This mix recipe looks good as well. I'm trying it just as soon as I get my hands on an instant pudding mix, though I would use chocolate pudding instead of vanilla.

But if you don't mind the hassle of heating up some milk, go back to the origins of hot chocolate. Heat up a cup or so of milk over medium heat and toss an ounce or two of chocolate, or a couple tablespoons of Nutella, or both if you're feeling adventurous. Stir until everything is nice and friendly, hot and homogeneous, and to eliminate any funny skins. Pour into a large mug you like cupping your hands around. Sip slowly.

Very, very slowly.