Recipe - Double Spiced Hot Chocolate

This recipe, in my opinion, is the ultimate relaxing hot chocolate.

The "double spices" in the name are cinnamon and cloves. I was originally introduced to this recipe in Michael Turback's book "Hot Chocolate". There's a ton of great recipes in this book, and I'll be going over a lot of them. I've made a couple tiny changes to my version of this recipe from what he has in the book, but for the most part, they're close to the same.

When I was growing up, every Christmas, my mother would push cloves into lemons and leave them in bowls around the house. It smelled so good! This hot chocolate captures a bit of that, along with the comfort of being indoors, nice and warm, on a cold night.

Put some slippers on and get out your whisk. Here's what we need to make this:

1 cup milk (2% or whole)
3 oz chopped bittersweet chocolate (60%-77%)
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp powdered sugar

 I'm using Scharffen Berger 70% bittersweet chocolate. This is my favorite chocolate to chop and use for hot chocolate recipes, both their 70% and their 62%. Where I live, I can usually find the bars in the baking section of some grocery stores. If they're not available in any stores by you, they are worth ordering online. For now, though, use whatever dark chocolate you have.

I also made a whipped cream to top this with, since I've run out of homemade marshmallows. Just 1/2 a cup of heavy cream, and about halfway through whipping it I added 1 tsp of vanilla and just under 1 tbsp of powdered sugar. That's a tasty, basic whipped cream. Just whip it until it becomes fluffy. Usually I use my electric beaters and it goes pretty quickly. This time I tried it with a whisk. Ugh. Never again! Electricity is awesome.

Heat up the milk, as usual, to just below boiling. While it's warming, I measure out the rest of the ingredients. The chocolate first, then I just drop the spices right into the measuring cup with the chocolate. Once the milk is ready to go, pour it all in slowly while whisking.

That clove and cinnamon is going to smell strong and delicious! If it's too strong and thick for your tastes, try 2 oz of chocolate instead of 3 oz.

I garnished it with the whipped cream, a little chopped chocolate, and a stick of cinnamon (which fell into the cup as the whipped cream melted). Served with some shortbread cookies, this is the most amazing thing when sitting down in the evening to read a good book or watch a favorite movie.