Springtime is for hot chocolate!

A post about hot chocolate...in spring. While hot chocolate season may be long gone for most of you, we still have snow on the ground and falling from the sky where I am. So, this is for all of you still looking at snow and wearing winter coats. I'll try to remember to repost for those of you looking at green and flowers in the fall.

One of the products we have ditched because of trans fat is hot chocolate. Yep, every container of powdered hot chocolate that I looked at in my grocery store had partially hydrogenated oil as an ingredient. I suppose the fat gives it a good mouth feel.


All is not lost, though! We now make our own hot chocolate mix - trans fat free - thanks to Alton Brown. He has a very tasty recipe for hot chocolate that we all rather enjoy. Not only is it better for us (have you ever looked at the ingredient list for store-bought powdered hot chocolate? It's loooong.), but it's also cheaper to make it ourselves. Alton suggests adding in a little cayenne, but I prefer to use a liberal dose of cinnamon instead. Everything is better with a little cinnamon!

Alton Brown's Hot Cocoa

2 cups powdered sugar
1 cup cocoa (Dutch-process preferred)
2 1/2 cups powdered milk
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1 pinch cayenne pepper, or more to taste (optional - I like to add cinnamon instead)
Hot water

Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl and incorporate evenly. In a small pot, heat 4 to 6 cups of water. Fill your mug half full with the mixture and pour in hot water. Stir to combine. Seal the rest in an airtight container, keeps indefinitely in the pantry. This also works great with warm milk.

Eating Well Anywhere also has a good hot chocolate recipe - one that doesn't use powdered milk. My husband likes having a complete mix that he can just dump into water and stir, but if you don't mind dumping into milk instead, the Eating Well Anywhere recipe is a great one to check out.