Goodbye, Coffee. hello, Chocolate.
This time I mean it. I’m really going to try and give up coffee. I don’t even like coffee. It makes my gut feel like hell. But if I don’t drink it, I get coffee FOMO. What will I drink instead? Tea? Makes me have to pee all the time, and it gives me hangnails. Yerba mate? Nasty. Coke? Not before lunch. Oh! Hot chocolate! Do I want that much milk? What if I make it with water, in the drip machine? Can I do that? ChatGPT says yes, but just for heating the water to that sweet spot between 190F and 200F. I give it a try using ingredients on hand: water, sweetened condensed milk, Ghirardelli chocolate syrup. Too watery. Fine, let’s go with milk, and let’s stock up on all the right ingredients.
I hopped into the car and drove up the hill to Fred Meyer’s, where I bought two Lindt 70% bars, and since it was buy two get one free, I went for an outlier, a 95% bar. The trees are starting to turn yellow, by the way. Fall arrives when it’s good and ready.
Back to hot chocolate supplies. Besides the bars, I picked up a bottle of chocolate truffle powder from Vermont, which only requires your adding a couple of heaping teaspoons to your already hot milk. Easy. A box of Abuelita for Mexican hot chocolate. And a spool of 14 gauge wire for Penny. Nothing to do with hot chocolate. I swung through housewares to see if they had an even better chocolatera than my 2-liter one, but they didn’t. The one they had was small, flimsy aluminum. I’d consider it an insult to my six dollars. Took up temporary residence in the baking aisle to contemplate the baking chocolate bars. Decided against that. Bought a couple packages of giant blueberries in case I wound up in a sugar coma, and a can of regular Reddi-Whip.
When I got home, I mixed the 95% bar into a liter of milk and set it on the griddle in the middle of the stove, so I didn’t have to worry about flame coming up the side of the chocolatera. Added a couple of big coffee spoons of sweetened condensed milk and stirred constantly over a medium flame. I was worried because the chocolate wasn’t breaking down completely. Too early to tell. The temperature probe said 155F. Penny tried a spoonful and said it was too salty. Forgot to mention, I added a pinch of salt and a couple of caps of vanilla extract at the beginning. I like how the vanilla spreads out across the top of the milk before anything’s melted. It looks like art.
Penny suggested more sweetened condensed milk, so I added a couple more spoons. Still not enough. One more did the trick.
The final touch, a small blast of whipped cream. Penny says it’s the best hot chocolate she’s ever had. I agree. No stomach ache. Yet. Tastes way better than coffee. Worst case scenario, I’ll do my one-week Coke and Advil detox purge. That’s how I’ve quit coffee in the past. Maybe I’ll even go cold turkey on the allergy meds, just for kicks.
While doing my hot chocolate research, I came across a YouTube video in which the protagonist mixed cocoa powder with sweetened condensed milk, rolled it into balls, stuck it in the fridge, then rolled the balls back in the cocoa powder. Insane. If I get sick of hot chocolate, I might gateway into that. Or maybe I’ll do both.
Did I mention my blood sugar’s too high?
