Hot Cocoa

I type before you today...a woman on the verge.

Huh...I once was in a play called "On The Verge" back in my college days.
It was about 3 Victorian woman caught in time travel.
This is where I learned the word sans.

Oh, how I miss the theater!!!
The smell and feel of stage makeup.
The warmth of the lights blinding you to the audiences presence.
The sick feeling of not being able to remember a single line before walking on stage only to remember everything precisely right once your foot hit the boards!
The long days and nights of rehearsal binding you to the people creating the world within the play.
Costumes, stage construction, endless hours of painting and sewing.
Ha, ha ha ha...it was preparing me for being a MOM!!!

If you find me being a bit dramatic at times, it is my vain attempt to recapture my by gone glory days of college theater and my many roles therein.
Sigh!!!

Okay, Wow...that really took a little side line journey there now didn't it.
Let's bring it back around to the start...
I type before you today a woman on the verge of my family camping adventure this weekend.
I used to be able to get out of it by staying home with our daughter as my husband took the boys.
She is kind of opposed to that now that she is 7!!! She wants to go!!

So...go we will.
My plan is soup in the crockpot cooking, so if there is a problem with the electricity then I am in big trouble. Actually my husband said that we will not be so far away from civilization that we couldn't go buy a large pot should we need it.
I don't want a large pot, cause if the crockpot isn't working then that means my coffee pot won't be working either and that would be a travesty of unparalleled proportions.

Uhhhhhh, adding coffee press to my list immediately!
I will have coffee, I will.
I will, I will, I will.
Coffee and me, me and coffee.
There is just nothing else I need to say about that.

I do however need to say something about hot chocolate!

It is so very easy to make.
Now, come on...I don't mean ripping open one of those cool foiled lined envelopes of hot cocoa mix to dump into a cup of hot water. Those nasty corn syrupy hydrogenated oily artificial flavor sucralosey blech a blech blech mixes!!

I mean making your own mix.
Yes, your own mix I said.

I must again wonder....How in the world did I get to be 40 years old and not ever make a hot cocoa mix????

When starting out on a search for a mix I came across many. You know what they all contained?
Powdered coffee creamer. Blech a blech blech!!! The list of ingredients on coffee creamer is just as bad as the rip open envelopes, why would you do that to yourself???

Okay, I can tell that I really need to calm down about this.
Deep cleansing breath and on to the recipe.

I did a search for "natural cocoa mix" and finally came across a recipe by Alton Brown from TV Food Network. If you aren't a foodie you may recognize him from the Welch's grape juice commercials or Iron Chef America, or his series Good Eats! He is very humorous in a geeky scientific sort of way. I trust him with my food.
Here is a link to his recipe, which I tweaked for our tastes.

Hot Cocoa Mix
5 cups powdered sugar
2 cups cocoa
5 cups powdered milk
4 tsp. cornstarch
2 tsp. salt

Put all of these ingredients in a bowl and gently whisk them together. Gently! Everything in that list is light and airy so a heavy hand creates quite a mess quickly.
It all fits in a large ziplog bag too, so that is a good way to go as well.



To make a cup of cocoa, simply put a heaping 1/4 cup mix into a mug and fill it with hot water. Stir, stir stir until the mix is dissolved and enjoy.
I know a 1/4 cup of the mix seems like a lot, but it really isn't when you think about the fact that it is the "milk" part of the hot cocoa too. Adjust the amount of mix to your particular taste needs.
I ran this past my 13 year old boy and got a double thumbs up!!

Oh...I just remembered too...in all of my recipe review reading people were very adamant about using the very best quality ingredients you could find. Go for the name brand powdered milk over the store brand and choose the best cocoa your frugal conscience can manage!
I had the Hershey's brown container here because I purchased the extra large size at Sam's and still have half a container even after making a cake, a batch of cookies and this cocoa!! hee hee.
I have a feeling I would really, really like it with a dark chocolate cocoa and will try that someday too.

Off to pack some more stuff now!
I hope to have many tales to share after camping this weekend!
Actually maybe I don't!!
I want to be sans drama, of that I am sure!!