I’ve made hot chocolate twice now this week, but this time I really got it.

Previously my attempts resulted in crazy mess and/or something that looked like soy milk with lumps of chocolate powder in it. But this time I ended up with thick smooth foamy chocolatey lookin’ chocolate! It tastes very dark but also sweet, just like I would want hot chocolate to taste. Even better, all I used was soy milk, raw cacao powder, and maple syrup. Nuthin fancy here! ;}

Some notes: The soy milk I used is the kind with soybeans and water as ingredients—nothing else. The cacao powder is just raw cacao, that’s it. And the maple syrup is pure organic maple syrup. No corn, no crazy extra ingredients. Just maple syrup. (I got the soy milk and cacao at Wheatsville Co-op, and Kyeli gave me her extra bottles of maple syrup. But you can buy those at Wheatsville, too. :P)

I put one mug’s worth of soy milk into my herb pot (well, it works!) and put the heat on high. I poured maple syrup into the bottom of the mug just until it had coated the bottom, then I stopped. I put what was probably a 1/5 or 1/6 of a cup of cacao (about two heaped tablespoons) into the mug, and I mixed and mixed and mixed it in with a spoon. I mixed until it was as mixed as I could get it. It still looked like powder, but I couldn’t find the syrup.

I was super careful to watch the soy milk on the stove. Soy milk tends to look innocent for a long time and then boil over unexpectedly. It’s sneaky. So I turned the heat off after I was sure it was really good and hot. (I didn’t want it to cool down too quickly while I was mixing it!)

So I poured an inch or two of hot soy milk into my mug. And I mixed and mixed and mixed it. This made the maple+cacao “powder” turn into dark thick chocolate sludge. (YUM.) I mixed it until it was as smooth as I could get it. Then I added another inch or so of hot soy milk. Mix mix mix mix mix. Smooth and getting a little bit foamy! Then I added another inch or so of hot soy milk. Alternating this way, making sure the mixture was as smooth as possible before adding more, I ended up with a great mug of hot chocolate. The whole deal took me less than ten minutes. It took some extra effort but oh my god, was it worth it.

When I was done I added a tiny bit more maple syrup (it just needed to be a little bit sweeter) and mixed it in, and it was the perfect temperature and incredibly smooth and chocolatey. There are definitely still lumps of cacao powder in the bottom and a bit on the spoon, but they are far more reasonable than any of my other attempts, and this mug I’m really enjoying. It’s fantastic. And it doesn’t have any crap in it! No crazy industrial powders, no wonky mixes, no Frankenstein food here. The taste of it is just incredible.

[Edit: I got almost to the bottom of the glass and realized that this is kind of a big mug, and it holds just a little too much cacao for me to drink in one sitting. You might want to use a smaller mug for your first try. This stuff is rich!]