Holiday greetings from the venerable Spy Test Kitchens! I am writing this week’s column just before gearing up for lots of holiday food prep, but you will be reading this post-Christmas. I hope you enjoyed yourself with lots of noise and wrapping paper, ubiquitous pine scent wafting through your house, and today you are still playing with new toys, or sleeping late. Then I hope you walk away from your screens, go read your new books, or sit quietly in a chair and stare out the window, watching the snow. Not every bit of the holidays has to be frantic – slow down. Watch an icicle dripping in the sunlight.
I have finished baking Christmas cookies for this year, but there is a little more baking in my immediate future: a breakfast sausage and egg casserole, a Boston cream pie, and some dinner rolls. And that does not include the important proposition of making (yet again) another batch of tempting pigs-in-blankets. I will leave the agonizing cooking decisions about the post-Christmas feast of leftovers to Mr. Sanders, who is pouring over the dozens of approaches that he can employ in re-heating. I’ll blanch the asparagus, and slice the potatoes for Potatoes Anna. Christmas dinner was an enormous calorie encounter. And as it is going to be gelid and bitterly cold for the next few days – we deserve the extra high test rocket fuel.
The perfect way to warm up during the chilly winter weather is with a steaming hot cup of hot chocolate. I was wandering through a high end boutique-y grocery store last weekend, eyeing the Christmas gift food displays, which are siren songs, luring you onto the rocks to grab your wallet and shake you down for every penny you have earned with your hard work and sweaty brow. I did not give in to the bright, shiny packaging of cellophane-wrapped Hot Cocoa Bombs, or Santa’s Sweet Shop Cocoa Wonderland Cocoa Bottle Assortments. Heavens to Betsy. 8.1 ounces of hot cocoa bombs will set you back $12.99! Trust me, it is better for your thrifty epicurean soul to make your own mixture of chocolate and cocoa powder. And since it is the holidays, maybe you’ll even make a smidge extra, and share it with your neighbor who doesn’t seem to mind that your messy pine tree has been shedding needles all over his otherwise tidy front walk for the last couple of months.
For Yourself – Simplest Hot Chocolate
1 ounce semisweet or dark chocolate – chopped
1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
1 cup milk
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 pinch salt
In a small saucepan, mix the chocolate, cocoa powder and half of the milk over low heat. Stir continuously until the chocolate is completely melted. Add the rest of the milk and the salt. Stir, until steam rises. Add sugar. Pour into a mug and top with mini marshmallows or whipped cream. Yumsters.
Feeling mad scientist experimental? Try adding a drop of peppermint extract or cayenne. Or even a dash of Bailey’s Irish cream. It is the Christmas season, after all.
Our friends at Food52 have a recipe for hot cocoa mix to share with your saintly neighbor: Hot Cocoa
Martha, who always manages to make the rest of us look drab and ordinary, has a recipe for white hot chocolate. Of course, she suggests putting it out for Santa. Well. I hope Santa still likes my gingersnaps.
Hot White Chocolate
Stay warm, drive carefully, and look out for your neighbors. It’s going to be slippery. Merry, merry!
“Some days you get up and you already know that things aren’t going to go well. They’re the type of days when you should just give in, put your pajamas back on, make some hot chocolate and read comic books in bed with the covers up until the world looks more encouraging. Of course, they never let you do that.”
― Bill Watterson
Jean Dixon Sanders has been a painter and graphic designer for the past thirty years. A graduate of Washington College, where she majored in fine art, Jean started her work in design with the Literary House lecture program. The illustrations she contributes to the Spies are done with watercolor, colored pencil and ink.
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