Time for Cocoa with Michele!

Happy Chocolate Monday Everyone,
  Let's all say Good by 89° + weather! Hello 35°! Before the changes of the weather go from awesome hotness to face numbing frigidness. Lets begin Autumn and all it has to offer crisp mornings, warm afternoons a rainy day here and there thrown in with a soup and sandwich for lunch. Best of all my favorite warmer upper... in fact a two for one deal.

Hot Cocoa! Today I'll share with you a Cocoa mix, I use for gifts during the Holidays and GP. 

Then I want to show you  what I mean by a two for one deal, where you steep ginger or ginger tea packets into the cocoa. 

My friend Margarita, who is a great host shared Cocoa/Ginger tea with me when I visited her.

One of her friends taught her how to make it and she thought I'd like it, because I'm more of a cocoa and tea drinker, than a coffee drinker. In her version she mixed the cocoa mix with the rabbit on the box, with the ginger tea packet. I usually use half of those packets, when I make tea on it's own. Ginger is strong! So when I was saying ooh that's plenty...she said "Look, you can't get the complete taste if you don't put enough ginger, so try it first." I loved it, go figure.
 Below are two ways I love to make hot cocoa, the mix being the fastest...cocoa mix hot water or milk,  and I'm in comfort. I like my cocoa mix,  because as you know I make my brown sugar so I can control my sugar intake and get all the benefits of the cocoa too.  All I need to do is add the ginger and honey tea, when I want to take my cocoa to the next level!

Easy Hot Cocoa Mix
1 1/2 c. Dark Brown Sugar
1 c. Cocoa powder
2 tsp. Kosher salt (adjust to your taste)

The Mix

 Sift ingredients in a bowl. If any salt or sugar gets left behind in the sifter just push it through or pour it in the mix and blend. Keep indefinitely in a lidded jar.

A Cup of Cocoa

To make hot chocolate use 2 Tbsp. Per cup Of hot milk~stir in 1/4 tsp. Vanilla and dollop or pipe on whipped cream and dust on more cocoa with a shaker! You'll feel like royalty I promise!

To take the cocoa to the next level mix in a packet of Ginger & Honey tea granules before topping with whipped Cream. Stir and enjoy!

This tea comes in green packets too

I believe my children prefer the chocolate syrup version, to make cocoa. I usually doubled the recipe to accommodate our crowd of 10 at the time. The chocolaty aroma is very intoxicating!

Hot Cocoa (syrup version) serves 4 cups

1/4 c. cocoa powder
1/2 c. sugar
1 dash of salt
1/3 c. water
4 c. milk (optional)
3/4 tsp. vanilla(optional)

1. Mix Cocoa, sugar, and salt in a medium saucepan.
2. Stir/Whisk in water on medium heat until boiling
3. Let the mix simmer like that for 2 min., whisking a bit.
4. If you are using this as hot cocoa then slowly pour in the milk and stir well. Be careful not to let the milk boil or you will get a skin. Once the syrup is done, it can be used for topping other treats like ice cream or popcorn.
5. Stir in Vanilla and vwalla, Hot cocoa!
6. Now if you want to add the individual Ginger tea crystals now is the time or when the cocoa is mixing into the milk add 1 to 2 slithers of ginger. Just like I have in the photo below. You can adjust the sweetness within your cup, but I want encourage you to taste it first and try and train your pallet to really "taste" more than just the sweetness of the cocoa. Enjoy!

"In the this photo are the two types of cocoa, ginger granules and slices"

After mixing in the milk in the syrup version, while it is simmering/warming up you can add a couple slices of ginger or the packets of tea granules, to achieve the same combination with the cocoa mix.

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