Designer Hot Chocolate

It snowed eight inches last night.

Today was a day of slogging around in uncomfortable winter boots and listening to snow slide off the roof.

On days like this, an after-work hot chocolate is compulsory.

But by this I do not mean the scary powdered stuff that has ingredients like corn syrup solids, sodium caseinate, dipotassium phosphate, mono- and diglycerides and silicon dioxide.

(How in the world can that be food?)

I am talking about quality ingredients. Why?

According to Ideal Bite,

• your choice of organic cocoa is better for the earth: "Non-organic cocoa is 2nd only to cotton in terms of the most pesticides used on the crop. "



• drinking real cocoa is better for you, too: "High in antioxidants. Cocoa has twice as many as red wine, and almost 3x the antioxidants of green tea."



• Ideal Bite also advises us to "buy fair trade and stand up for the 109,000 child laborers on cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast, where 43% of our cocoa is produced."

The Ideal Bite link has some nice (if pricey) sources for good cocoa. You can also make your own:

from Weekend Knitting: 50 Unique Projects and Ideas

1 tablespoon high-quality unsweetened cocoa powder

1/2 teaspoon sugar

few grains salt

2/3 cup milk

1/4 cup chopped high-quality bittersweet (dark) chocolate

dash of cognac or rum

Combine cocoa, sugar and salt. Warm milk in a saucepan, and add 1 tablespoon of warm milk to cocoa mixture, making a paste, Stir paste into hot milk, add chocolate, whisk until blended and hot. Pour into mug, add cognac or rum.

Makes one glorious serving.