Hot Chocolate

This is hot chocolate how I always dreamed it could be - lots of chocolate, rich & smooth but with less sugar than mixes. Reprinted from "It must have been something I ate" by Jeffrey Steingarten.

Chocolat Chaud

2 1/4 cups whole milk

1/4 cup water

1/4 cup (generous) sugar

1 - 100 gm bar (3 1/2 ounces) dark bittersweet chocolate, Scharffen Berger, Valrhona or Lindt (see note) finely sliced with a serrated breadknife

1/4cup cocoa powder, loosely packed, preferabley Valrhona

In a 2 quart saucepan, stir together the milk, water and sugar. Bring to a boil over medium heat. Add the chopped chocolate and the cocoa and bring to a boil again, whisking until the chocolate and cocoa are dissolved and the mixture has thickened. Reduce the heat to very low.

Blend for 5 minutes with an immersion mixer or whirl the hot chocolate in a standard blender for half a minute, until thick and foamy. Yield: Four 6-ounce cups of hot chocolate

Note: I use a dark chocolate containing close to 70 percent cocoa, though Lindt bittersweet also works just fine. The Mayans and the Aztecs considered the froth the best part. Today, 30 seconds with a blender accomplishes what a half hour of beating did long ago.