Homemade Drinking Chocolate Mix.

I'm FOREVER looking for ways to cheapen things up around here, while lessening the chemical lode in my kid's bodies.

Mixes are EXPENSIVE for what they are. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Tempting, but loaded with chemicals and all that.

I found a recipe for homemade hot cocoa mix, and I think it may be THE one. Although, this one needs to be taken DOWN a notch or two, being a foodie site. My kids don't know the difference between Vosges and Hershey's, so I'm not going to worry myself too much about it.

So, start with one empty cocoa mix tin. The tall cylinder.
Add 1 cup of sugar, 1 cup of unsweetened cocoa, a teaspoon of salt, two teaspoons of cornstarch, 1 teaspoon of salt and 1 cup of MINI chocolate chips. Put the lid back on and shake it to high heavens.

To serve, add 2 heaping teaspoons to empty mug, and add hot milk.  You will need to stir occasionally as the chocolate continues to melt...just like the Hershey's hugs hot cocoa packets, which were my favorite. If you don't like that effect, then go ahead and pulse the whole thing in the food processor a couple of times, so the chocolate morsels are broken up into even tinier pieces. I like the melting on the bottom of the cup thing, but that's just me.

Realistically, this is NOT any cheaper than a box of hot cocoa, but I can tell you everything that's in it, and MAN, is it good.

Related articles

• Make Your Own Better-Tasting Hot Cocoa Mix [Recipes] (lifehacker.com)

Ridiculously Decadent and Moderately Healthy Triple Chocolate Muffins for a sick little lady.

Last night was a small version of parenthood hell.

 MissAngelBaby was up, I swear, the ENTIRE night. She's got advanced mama-itis, which forces her to only be able to sleep on my head, apparently. When I last attempted to roll her off my nose and mouth in a desperate attempt to breathe, she sat straight up and started cackling like a loon. Wide awake, she decided to pound me with her pumpkin-head for several hours, whilst I negotiated her return to slumber to no avail. 

Eventually, when I could see the branches through the blinds, (that's my daily breaking point), I woke up my husband and sent them both downstairs, where he managed to get her to go back to sleep. (Of course.)

Less than three hours later, MissLittleGirlAngel woke up with a fit of coughing and tears. She's had a cold for five days, and I was letting it play itself out, but she woke up moaning in pain in her left ear. (Yes, she knew what to call it!!!! Yay, me!!!) 

A dose of tylenol and about twenty minutes of the three year old dozing on my head (is my head especially soft?) she woke again, and off to the doctor she went with her daddy, while I stayed home with my wild butted little nursling.

The verdict: an ear infection. Normal for us with colds. Ten days worth of amoxicillin and a cranky child to boot. On Thursday. Thursdays are ALREADY crazy.

Well, I wanted to get some nutrition in her when she got home, and with this kid that either means sausage, chicken, or chocolate. I don't have any sausage or chicken right now, because I'm working with turkey and ham leftovers.

So, chocolate it was. I took my trusty chocolate chip muffin recipe and kicked it up a notch or seven, adding some healthy alternatives, mostly so I didn't have guilt for feeding a sick kid cupcakes for breakfast. 

It's only okay for grown ups to eat cake for breakfast. True story.

So here's what I did...

The Original Recipe (courtesy of Mr.Breakfast.com) My changes bolded

Chocolate Chip Muffins

(12 servings)    Printable Version

• 2 cups all-purpose flour 1 Cup all purpose flour and 1 Cup whole wheat
• 1/3 cup light-brown sugar
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoon baking powder (round the teaspoons a bit)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2/3 cup milk  3/4 C Skim milk
• 1/2 cup butter -- melted and cooled  1/2 C Mashed banana or other puree such as applesauce
• 2 eggs - beaten
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 package (12 oz) chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup walnuts or pecans -- chopped  1/2 C Hershey's baking cocoa
• Chocolate glaze, recipe coming tomorrow. 

Preheat oven to 400 F. and grease up twelve muffin cups.

In a large bowl, stir together flour, sugars, baking powder,cocoa, and salt. In another bowl, stir together milk, eggs, butter banana, and vanilla until blended. Make a well in center of dry ingredients; add milk mixture and stir just to combine. Stir in chocolate chips and nuts.

Spoon batter into muffin cups; bake 15-20 minutes, or until a knife inserted in center of one muffin comes out clean. Remove muffin tin to wire rack; cool 5 minutes and remove from tins to finish cooling.



Drizzle with glaze.
Serve warm.



The glaze recipe has to wait because I'm irritated about another convenience product on the market, and it's just going to have to wait till tomorrow, because it's Thursday, and I have to force feed my monster chocolate muffins now and put her to bed in time to get ready for work and put laundry away.  If you absolutely MUST glaze before I get tomorrow's blog done, then melt equal parts chocolate and heavy cream in the microwave, stirring every thirty seconds or so, then do a Jackson Pollock on the tops of the hot muffins.

Yes. On the hot muffins.
They are fabulous.

Oh. My. Gosh. King Aurthur's Flour sells STUFF

Not just STUFF.

Baking STUFF.

Powdered cheese. Really. The kind to sprinkle on top of freshly baked cheddar crackers to give you the I've-just-eaten-a-snack-food coating on your fingers and here's the very best part, the most utterly fabulous news in the whole world: You can actually read and understand the ingredients.

Pain au chocolate sticks.  Perfectly shaped little sticks of chocolate to wrap homemade croissant dough around.  Baker's special dry milk...to make your loaves rise higher... The English muffin rings I've been looking EVERYWHERE for. I knew they sold FLOUR...I didn't know they sold STUFF. I should probably block the site right now and for at least two months after Christmas since my husband actually threatened to wrap flour up and give it to me as a gift...but it's a testament to my self control that I haven't loaded up a hundred dollar cart..or any cart at all.

I stumbled across this site looking for a decent recipe for goldfish...as in, to make them, not make something out of them, and well, I'm still looking. I've seen several...some call for baker's ammonia (eh?) some look kind of long, and some call for a food processor, which I don't have. So I'm still looking for a decent recipe, and marveling at the fact that I now find cooking tools as exciting as shoes.

Ok, maybe a little more exciting than shoes.

Idiot parenting lesson number 1-never leave the chocolate unattended.

I made chocolate chip muffins this morning.

Really good whole grain muffins, with dark chocolate chips dotted all the way through.  This is really the easiest recipe in the history of the world, and I simply sub out whole grain flour for white and toss in some flax seed, so it's not entirely guilt ridden.


There was a HUGE plate leftover for tomorrow's breakfast, right according to plan, sitting on the kitchen table.

Did you see the past tense there? Because right now, my middle child is doing laps around the living room, having bootlegged several muffins at a time into the downstairs bathroom and crouched behind the closed door, eating her bounty while using the step stool/training potty as a table. She's on a sugar coated caffeine high that may not end till three or four in the morning.

She must have eaten four whole muffins, and the rest have been clearly claimed with a series of well placed toddler-sized bite marks.

 *deep sigh*

 I'm not sure who's more scared right now, me, or the dog she's riding like a pony.