Caught without cocoa ?
I remember hearing in high school during Field Day that our radio club advisor, Mr. Gates was a Swiss Miss hot chocolate drinker. I can't confirm or deny that but I do know that sometimes I'll get an urge for hot chocolate when the November winds are blowing and there's no hot chocolate mix in the house, not even the store brand ! So today I came up with this simple, better than nothing, recipe for hot chocolate mix (taking a recollection of the old pound cake recipe as a guide):
For 1 serving made with 6 oz. of boiling water:
1 tablespoon of cocoa powder
3 tablespoons of dry milk
1 tablespoon of sugar
1 tablespoon of butter (3 pats)
Mix the powdered ingredients together in a mug, heat up the water to boiling, pour it in and mix. Stir like crazy and then finally add the butter pats and keep stirring until melted.
Of course marshmallows can be added and vanilla extract too but I didn't have them on hand. I would take it very easy with mint extract - easy to end up with something like mouthwash if not careful. Other spices and salt might be interesting but I didn't try them.
Yes there will probably be an undissolved glop at the bottom of the cup, I don't know how Swiss Miss gets the all stuff to dissolve. Why use butter ? It sorta makes it creamy (dry milk usually doesn't have fat unless it's something like Nido / Klim. I hear the cool kids add butter to coffee, probably real cream and milk would be better in hot chocolate than butter and dry milk but I didn't have them either.
BTW I remember hearing that the classic recipe for pound cake used a pound of butter, pound of flour, pound of sugar and so on => you get the idea.
Just an idea for a gloomy afternoon - keep stirring ! :)
Update 12-1-2025: changed the dry milk to 3 tablespoons, using Deseret Farms dry milk but need to get some Klim (like the POWs had in The Great Escape) or Nido (Klim and Nido appear to be identical to me).
Update #2, 12-12-2025: I finally got to the store where the house brand of cocoa was on sale:
It is a lot better than my recipe, and no yucky leftovers on the bottom of the mug !
Best Regards,
Chuck, WB9KZY
http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm
