Homemade Hot Cocoa

Two winters ago, a certain auntie who is close enough to me to express her true feelings without being rude let me know with not-very-hidden disregard what she thought when I pulled out a commercial brand hot cocoa to make for the kids coming in from sledding in the snow.

"Really? You use that?"

I explained that for as often as we make hot cocoa in the winter, I was not going to lug out all the ingredients necessary . . . despite how much high fructose corn syrup solids don't exactly "say" winter and joyful times around the kitchen table.

Even understanding my explanation, her opinion was still basically that no, no, no, that commercial chemical soup didn't belong in my house and we should all slow down just a little bit in life to make those things from scratch that can be made easily.

And, to go down a rabbit trail, so to speak that is an interesting question I ponder and experiment with often: Why exactly are we (as a culture) rushing so much? Am I using a lot of short cuts and convenience foods so my kids can spend more time dumped in front of the TV? Or so we can rush around from event to event, living a frenetic life? Isn't there some value in dropping activities that create an instant entertainment kind of life-view to do things together, kids at ankles, that are interesting and wholesome and slow? Like taking five minutes to make real hot cocoa? Is taking time to make hot cocoa a waste of time because the kids could be cramming in another "educational" video? And yet, sometimes we are sick or running on almost no sleep, and we just can't manage these things that require "extra" time. Finding the balance is what I seek.

How tickled I was to find a recipe for homemade cocoa mix using common ingredients I already keep in my pantry, so that I can spend the entire five minutes or less to whip up a batch that keeps well in a jar to use all winter! My review is that it doesn't taste as much like a sugar explosion as commercial cocoa mix, but it tastes real and good, albeit a bit different. My two-year-old liked it very much.

Cocoa
Source: "Make the Bread, Buy the Butter"

Makes 2-1/2 cups mix, enough for about 20 cups of cocoa. Cost: about half that of commercial cocoa mix.

1/2 cups dark brown sugar
1 cup cocoa powder
2 teaspoons kosher salt

1. Sift ingredients into a bowl. Keeps indefinitely in a lidded jar.

2. To make hot chocolate, use 2 tablespoons per cup of hot milk. Stir in 1/4 teaspoon vanilla.