A Cure for Dark Winter Afternoon Blues

I’ve been remiss again, and for this I apologize. The life of a grad student is often erratic, and various deadlines have kept me from writing about my food-related adventures. Happily, they haven’t entirely prevented me from having said adventures. So, now that I have some time again, I shall return to chronicling my chocolate and spice related capers.

Despite my happiness at having a bit more free time though, there is a cloud in my otherwise blue sky. A literal cloud, in fact, because winter has arrived, bringing with it cold, dark afternoons :(. Finally, I understand why people who live in Canada, the northern U.S and northern Europe are so obsessed with the weather. It’s actually depressing to not see or feel fuzzy, yellow sunshine for months on end. (I mentioned these places in particular, because these are the cold parts of the world that I’ve lived in. I realize of course that there are other cold places, I’ve just never lived there and so, have no idea if people there are obsessed with ‘The Weather’.)

And then suddenly, a few weeks ago, I stumbled upon a cure, a magical, instantaneous cure for winter blues, namely: hot chocolate. All you need is a few minutes in the kitchen to stir up a nice cup of hot, chocaltey richness, and you’re all set. You can curl up on your couch with a blanket and a good book, and a soft pair of socks on your feet (ideally a cat is also included in this scenario) and winter will actually seem bearable.

Don’t believe me? Just look at this:

I’ve taken to making myself a cup every once in a while 🙂 I use homemade chocolate fudge ice-cream topping to make the hot chocolate, rather than cocoa or chocolate flakes. If you’d like to recreate this deliciousness, it’s fairly simply. Just warm up 2/3rds of a cup of milk. Then dissolve 2-3 tablespoons of homemade dark chocolate fudge into it. Here is a recipe for a velvety, homemade dark chocolate fudge that I strongly recommend; it’s super yummy and super-easy to make. (It is also delicious on ice-cream, which is what I originally made it for.)

Once you’ve dissolved the fudge, top off the hot chocolate with some whipped cream and stick a cinnamon stick into the cup:

Finally, sprinkle some cocoa powder on the cream, and sip away! If you’ve got a cookie to go with it, more power to you. I think my next post will be about the dark-chocolate-chunk cookies that I am now about to go and bake 😛 Mmmm.