Natty makes peppermint hot chocolate

I used to pay almost the price of a magazine (!!) for a hot chocolate with a shot of peppermint syrup when the winter rolled around. Another holiday drink indulgence of mine has always been the gingerbread latte. Anyone who knows me knows that every year I look forward to these sugary/spicy overpriced concoctions and make any excuse to go for one…in fact, when I was living in London last year, I would sometimes shell out 3-4 pounds for one…uh that’s 6-8 dollars people! I bought a fabulous vintage sweater for less than that recently! Ugghh…Ok white guilt/white privilege alert!! I should be saying that for that money I could feed the mouths of a small village in a developing country…the point is that whatever the comparison may be, these drinks are not “values” (a euphemism my sommelier friend told me to use to describe cheap wines ).

Anyways, so this year I decided that it may be fun to make my own winter drinks and my first attempt was the peppermint hot chocolate/cocoa:

I mix together

• 1 tablespoon of pure cocoa powder with:

• 1 tablespoon of sugar (but adjust to your sweetness preference) and then add:

• A bit (a tablespoon?) of cold milk to blend the two ingredients into a base for the drink. I then warm:

• 1 cup of milk (use half water is you want a less rich drink, or half cream if you want a richer drink) and pour it into the base mixture. Now I add the one out of the ordinary kitchen ingredient:

• Pure peppermint extract. I put in just a drop because it is pretty strong but adjust to your preference. If you’re feeling extravagant top with:

• Whipped cream and then:

• Crumbled candy cane.

• I give it 4 Ms (my own food tastiness ranking scale that I’m making up as I type this) Mmmm!