Italian(ish) Hot Chocolate

I got an iPad for Christmas (squeal!), and one of my favorite apps quickly became the Zite magazine. I love that it's a "smart" magazine in that it pays attention to my likes and dislikes and tailors the magazine to my interests.

As a result, I'm getting a lot of food/cooking articles. One such article was a recipe for Italian hot chocolate. My husband used to do a lot of traveling in Europe, and at the end of the vacation he would go spend the weekend with my cousin in Rome. One time he took her out for what he said was the fanciest (I think probably that meant the most expensive -but who knows) hot chocolate in Rome. I was wondering what made said hot chocolate so special. But, then as with so many other things, I promptly forgot about it. It shows what a chaotic year it was because I usually never forget anything that has to do with chocolate.

Jenna love hot cocoa and often has it on a cool morning (or sometimes as a part of her after school snack). I already am kind of a hot cocoa snob in that we make our cocoa, it's not what I grew up thinking of as "hot chocolate" where you squeeze the Quick into some hot milk (yuck).

So, I came across this blog on my Zite magazine and I knew I had to give it a try. Now, I didn't go full out and put in the corn starch - so it didn't get really thick. I also didn't add in the half and half (I didn't have any and my waistline had a lot of damage done to it over Christmas - either I need to go buy bigger clothes or cut back on these things).

I made hot cocoa for Jenna yesterday and along with the cocoa, milk and sugar, we melted in some high quality chocolate chips. Ohhhhhh did it ever make it rich and yummy! I may have found a new love! Another thing I liked about it was that a little goes a long ways. I am known for sometimes (like 1pm every day) going overboard on my chocolate. This is rich and strong enough that even I only needed a few sips and my chocolate craving was satisfied.

Now I have to head off to the elliptical to try and work off enough calories I can indulge in a cup of this good stuff later today. What a great way to spend a rainy Monday!