Hot cocoa drink recipe

The introduction

Maybe you have all drank that sweet brown thing when you were little, well, I’m sure I have. And I had lots of it, because we had milk and everyone just loved this drink, and everyone knew, that it was healthy and good for us, so we had those drinks whenever it was possible. Maybe you have a question now _ what drink I’m talking about. You all know it and it’s a cocoa drink or a hot cocoa or maybe you call it a hot chocolate, it doesn’t really matter now, but what matters is that it’s a great drink and I love it very much, especially when it has a lot of cacao in it. I’m sure you will all agree with me, when I say, that this cacao taste makes the milk taste heavenly and you just don’t want this drink to end.

I remember, I didn’t really liked milk in my childhood. Well, to be honest, I don’t love it that much now either. Perhaps, it’s the taste, you know, it has its special taste and, I guess, that was what I didn’t like in it. But they kept saying that it was good for my health and that I should drink it from time to time to have healthy bones and to get taller and stuff like that, so I drank it. And when I caught cold they also made me drink milk, so… Well, sometimes you have to make children do stuff they don’t like for their own sake, because one day they will grow up and they will remind you those things you didn’t do and they will question your decisions about stuff that you didn’t do. So, I’m glad that someone made me drink milk even if I didn’t like it that much.

But hey, I was not that selective about this hot cocoa drink and whenever we had it, I drank it at once, because it was so delicious!

So, the other day, I was sitting at home, watching TV and I just remembered about this hot cocoa and I wanted it so bad that I could even smell and taste it at that moment. You know, when you want something badly, you just go for it. And even if it was raining outside, I decided to go ahead and buy some ingredients and prepare some cocoa drink and just enjoy my evening at home. So I did that.

You know, they have these different kinds of milk and they are all packed differently and produced by different companies and stuff like that. I don’t really get which milk I should buy. Some of them have vitamins in it, some of them are low-fat and so on and so forth and I usually stand there in some grocery store, staring at those milk bottles and reading each one of them and can’t decide which one to take. Once I remember, I stood like that for so long, that I just left then and didn’t buy any one of them. Well, I guess, the chosen one usually has a 3. 2% fat in it and is a product of Georgia. However, this other day, I was walking home and decided to take a look at this small market. They have products from village, I guess, and they have dairy products, as well, and as you have already guessed, those products are not produced by some factories and stuff like that, they are just homemade products, and it’s considered, that they are healthier than those, which are sold at grocery stores. So I asked them and they said, they had some milk and I bought that milk. And it was just like I used to drink when I was little. I mean, there’s whole lot of difference between homemade and factory-made stuff, if you ask me.

Cacao powder

The other thing is the cacao powder. There are lots of different cacao powders and the taste is really different and I just don’t really know which one to buy. They say there should be just one product and that would solve all the problems, because there would be no choices to make between different companies’ products. Well, that is not going to happen. So, I just have to figure out which one is right for me at that moment and just buy it. Moreover, just like buying milk, I use to stand there in front of all those cacao powders and read them and decide which one to buy. Good thing is that while they are sold in boxes, they are sold in small packages, too, so they are something like 25 grams or whatsoever and you can take different kinds of cacao powders in those packages and taste them each and then decide which one is better for what and next time when you are at the grocery store you will know which one you need to buy. That’s my theory so far, but I haven’t proven that, because once I get home I just mix them into a bowl and prepare that hot cocoa or some chocolate cream or whatever and so, I don’t really know which one tastes bitter or which one is more chocolaty or something like that. So, some days ago, when I wanted to prepare some hot cocoa and was at the grocery store to buy cacao powder, I saw some packs of it, where there was even written how to prepare cocoa and there was written the amounts of stuff you should take for it, and I saw so many other packages, that I thought that I had bought those stuff, where the preparation methods were written, but when I got home and unpacked my things and saw this cacao powder, it was no that one which had preparation process on it. And I had bought two different cacao powders, if you want to know the truth and neither one of them were that package. Well, that was a bust, but at least I had some cacao and, of course, I knew how to prepare this hot chocolate, so I didn’t really need this preparation methods written on some packages.

Preparation process

Well, I was happy that I could finally drink some hot milk cocoa and started preparing it. First of all, I made milk to a boil. And until it got to boiling, I just made this dry mixture of cacao powder and stuff. So, I took each package of my cacao powder and put one tablespoon of each of them in a bowl. Then I added two vanilla packages, each of them was about 10 grams, I guess, so that my cocoa would have some great scent and taste of sugary vanilla. And I also added some granulated sugar to the mixture. Well, it was a half cup of sugar, I guess, but the sugar is not the main thing here, I mean, you can always add some sugar to your cocoa drink just like you do when drinking tea or coffee or whatever. But still, I added some mixture to my cacao dry mixture, so that I wouldn’t bother putting some sugar in my cocoa drink while drinking _ that’s the simple way of doing that. So, my dry mixture was ready and all I had to do was to wait for the milk to boil. And you know, you should be very careful about milk boiling, because you wait for some time and it doesn’t do anything and then you just take your eyes off of it for just a second and it boils and the milk is spilled out of the saucepan, so that’s the thing I hate about boiling milk. Now, when everything was ready and the milk boiled, I turned the heat down, took a cup of boiling milk and poured it into my bowl filled with dry mixture of cacao powder and stuff and whisked it with that thing that you mostly know to whisk eggs when making omelet or scrambled eggs and stuff. So everything was mixed well with that thing and I just poured that thing back into the saucepanfilled with milk and stirred it, too. Now all I had to do is to turn the heat up again and wait until the mixture would boil. Then I would let it boil for a couple of minutes and that was all, I could drink my hot milk cocoa drink and enjoy it!

So, there are a couple of things that people can do to pimp this hot cocoa drink and maybe you would like some of them. First of all, you can add some ice-cream to it, of course, that’s what some people do, they add some ice-cream to their hot cocoa drink, and, well, personally I haven’t done it yet, but I’m going to try that some day and see whether or not it is a good idea. But, hey, a good ice-cream never killed nobody, so, why would it not be good _ hot cocoa drink with a little bit of ice-cream?! I can add some great chocolate ice-cream to my hot cocoa drink, or maybe it can be cooled down and then added some ice-cream. Or you can even let it get cold and when it gets cold, then you can add some ice cubes and ice-cream to it and you will have a great summer drink _ cold cocoa with ice-cream and it will be just like cold coffee, which everyone loves to drink in those hot summer days, and it just won’t be coffee, but it will be something like chocolate and, if you ask me, chocolate is better than coffee and it tastes better, too. Well, I prefer cocoa to coffee. And when there’s no need to drink coffee and get that caffeine with no reason, it’s better if you drink cocoa, if you want to know the truth, or at least, that’s what I think.

Adding some things to your cocoa drink

So, another thing that you can do is to add some cinnamon to your cocoa drink and it will have an amazing flavor and taste, too. But just be careful, not to add much cinnamon. Because I did that once and it was pretty bad. I mean, it was not bitter or something, but it had this cinnamon flavor very much and even now I remember its scent and I just can’t have much cinnamon in my drinks or whatever since then. And it was not just one drink that I drank at that time. I had made hot cocoa with a litre or half of it of milk, I think, and imagine I had to drink all that in two days or so, because, well, you can’t just prepare something and let it be in the fridge for forever, you know. However, cinnamon is good for our body and you should add some of them to your dishes and drinks, and it’s good when you are on a diet, too, so just consider everything! Also, you can buy those cinnamon sticks and not the ground cinnamon and just put that stick into your cup filled with hot cocoa drink and it will be beautiful as well as it will have this scent and taste of a good cinnamon and you can take it out whenever you want. I think, that’s a better idea, if you are like me and you don’t really want to have that ground cinnamon in your hot cocoa. And, to be honest, this ground cinnamon just gets all starchy and stuff when put into liquid, I guess, and it’s kind of bad to drink it, I just remembered that tiny little thing. So, just be warned about that, too!

Another thing you can do is to add some heavy cream to your hot beverage. It’s just delicious and you can find many pictures with hot cocoa and heavy cream beautifully put in the middle of a cup full of hot cocoa or hot chocolate or whatever. Looking at those pictures just makes you want to have a cup of that hot cocoa with heavy cream! Or, maybe you just don’t want that heavy cream and then you can just put some whipped cream on your hot cocoa drink. And then you can sprinkle some melted chocolate or chocolate syrup on that whipped cream and it will be just beautiful and will taste pretty good, too.

Also, they use those small marshmallows to decorate those cups filled with hot cocoa and it’s kind of cute and, I don’t know how the taste is, but for the beauty you can add them to your cup and just enjoy your drink.

And you should know, that just one cup of hot cocoa can be something like 200 calories. It really depends on how much sugar you use and whether you add those marshmallows and cream and all the other stuff.

So, I’m sure you enjoy the hot cocoa drink as much as I do, or at least, you will try and when you like it, you will enjoy it every other day for your breakfast or whatever you want. It’s just really delicious, if you ask me. And, you can have your friends come over and have some hot cocoa drinks served to them with those small decorations that I wrote about and they will love those, trust me!

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