Spicy Chocolate

When you get tired of hot cider, a wonderful, comforting substitute is hot chocolate. Even better than traditional hot chocolate is spiced chocolate. This recipe comes Bon Appetit via Kim O'Donnel's Washington Post food blog, which is a featured link on this site. Now, granted, this hot chocolate takes more time, effort, and ingredients than the typical powdered mix, but is worth it as a winter treat. I made it for the first time last weekend, and it was wonderful. My husband and I had been craving ice cream, and were on the verge of going out to get a pint. After drinking our spicy hot chocolate, we forgot about ice cream completely.

The longest step is simmering all the spices together with the milk, and trying to keep a skim from forming. I used 2% milk instead of whole, and found the hot chocolate didn't feel thin at all.

After adding the cocoa and sugar, nothing was left to do but drink the chocolate. Unfortunately, we didn't actually feel like it a few nights ago. So I strained it and put it in the fridge. On Sunday morning, Darren and I reheated the chocolate, adding a little more milk to get any chocolate out which had coagulated on the bottom of the bowl.

The hot chocolate took only a short time to reheat, and still tasted great. The hot pepper flavor was a little more pronounced, so I recommend cutting down on that if you plan to save the hot chocolate for later. Altogether the tastes of cinnamon, star anise, and cardamom make a wonderful hot beverage that is perfect for customizing to your own preferences.