Hot Chocolate

There is one thing that does and will always haunt me. We are all guilty of it, I know you are; including me. It's the treacherous canister of powdered hot chocolate lurking in your pantry!! I hope you know that stuff pretty much consists of cocoa powder and sugar. Eww. So why not make homemade? You'll be glad you did.

So as I was searching the internet one day for hot chocolate recipes, I realized that they all use either cocoa powder or fancy chocolate. You know, I found some that were like "3 ounces of 70% cacao bittersweet chocolate" OH YEAH, I'll just whip that out of my cupboard. We didn't even have any cocoa in whole entire house so that is exactly what inspired me to make homemade hot chocolate with simple ingredients that we all(mostly) have on hand. My recipe uses half and half. You could use heavy cream but I like to keep things a little healthier(not!). It uses mostly half and half but some milk too. So here you go!

Ingredients:
1 cup half and half
1/2 cup milk(or half and half or heavy cream if you prefer)
1 tsp corn starch
1/2 cup chocolate chips. Yep, everyday choco chips. Easy, I tell you.

In a small saucepan on medium-low heat, heat 1 cup half and half for about three minutes. Keep a watch on it to make sure it doesn't scorch(burn) on the bottom. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, mix 1/2 cup milk with the cornstarch to form a thickener. Whisk this thickener into the already warm half and half and continue whisking over low heat just until incorporated and not lumpy. Dump in the chocolate chips and gently stir to melt them. Turn off the heat. That step is important. Now, at this point, you could pull out your handy-dandy Cuisinart Smart Stick Immersion Blender that you just happened to get for Christmas and whip that hot chocolate til it's nice and frothy. But if you don't have on of these lovely gadgets, just whisk the living daylights out of it. It'll be fine.




Now pour into 3 mugs if your thirsty. If your just ravenous, pour into 2 mugs and save more for yourself :) You can top it with marshmallows, or even better, whipped cream.



So creamy and luscious.... yum.


I used a menagerie of mugs but this is my favorite:


He is just so smiley and cute!