Hot Chocolate

We recently had a very lovely snow fall. Stalena and Sesha, being the hardworking outdoorsy girls that they are, shoveled the driveway. I, being the not-at-all outdoorsy girl, made hot chocolate to help warm them back up. Am I lucky or what? Then again, the week before they were very lucky because I literally cleaned the entire house. So....I guess we're even. Anyway, when the idea hit me to make hot chocolate for them, I wasn't thinking of trying anything new. And then I realized that if I tried Curtis Stone's hot chocolate recipe, I would be one recipe closer to my goal. The trick was that I didn't have any measurements, just a video to help me guess at amounts.

Hot Chocolate (from Curtis Stone)

3 cups milk
1 1/2 cups whipping cream
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup (plus) of Ghiradelli milk chocolate chips
Ice cream

Combine the milk, whipping cream, and sugar in a saucepan. Heat gently, being careful not to boil the liquid. If you boil the milk and cream, you'll separate out the fat. I've not made this mishap, but I'm guessing it might lead to a lumpy (and not very tasty) drink. The tip is to use half the amount of whipping cream per the amount of milk. (So, one cup of milk to half cup of cream, 2 cups of milk to 1 cup cream, and so on.) Once your liquid is hot, remove from the heat. The heat from the liquid will melt the chocolate. If you leave it on the heat, you'll cook the chocolate instead of melting it. Once the chocolate is completely melted and no lumps remain, you can put the hot chocolate into mugs. Curtis suggests topping with ice cream which I did since we just so happened to have some available. Have you noticed a theme with my cooking yet? I try to make use of ingredients I have on hand. Now, Curtis said to use whatever kind of chocolate you like. He used the 70% cacao, I think. I'm not a dark, bitter chocolate person, so I went straight for the milk chocolate. Use whatever makes you happy. He also talked about mixing other flavors like mint into the hot chocolate, but I don't really like mixing things with my chocolate.

The girls' treat for their hard work:



The lovely snow :)



It sounds like we'll be getting more snow in the upcoming days, so I'm sure my chance at shoveling will be coming soon. I wonder if a hot chocolate fairy will come to visit me?