Cocoa and Hot Chocolate with homemade marshmallows

When January brings in the New Year and its icy, silver landscape, I always think of cocoa as the ultimate comfort food. Whether you’re curled up in front of the fire covered with Grandma’s afghan and enjoying a good book—perhaps Whittier’s Snowbound—or stomping off the snow after the fun of skiing, sledding, skating or making snowmen, a cup of hot chocolate or cocoa with marshmallows floating on the rich bubbly surface is the epitome of comfort and decadence.

It’s also a drink that spans the child-adult chasm unlike hot toddies or even coffee. It’s a great transitional food between the holidays—still sinfully good but a little more on the nourishing side than the eggnogs and cookies and other overly rich foods we’ve been eating and drinking. Cocoa (or is it hot chocolate?) is both a nursery food and an après ski staple.

Hot chocolate or cocoa—do you know the difference? I wasn’t sure I did, exactly. We serve one or the other here at the Candlelight Inn as a morning hot beverage choice. I usually offer it verbally as cocoa and sometimes people answer back that they’ll take hot chocolate. So, of course, I set out to find the difference. It turns out that it’s too obvious—one is made exclusively with cocoa powder and the other with chocolate squares or chips.

Our daughter who is visiting from Boston and a chocolate lover eagerly agreed to help with a taste test. We made five recipes and rated them all—some were hot chocolate and some cocoa. I am including the two top winners and some delightful homemade marshmallows to serve with them. (Hint: they’re easy).

Breakfast Cocoa

6 Tbsp cocoa
6 Tbsp. sugar
Dash salt
½ cup water
3 ½ cups 2 % milk

Mix cocoa, sugar and salt; add water. Cook and stir 3 minutes. Stir in milk; heat to boiling point but do not boil. Beat with wire whip to froth right before serving. Makes 6 servings.

Variation: To total mixture, add 2 Tbsp. milk chocolate chips and 1 Tbsp. whipping cream.

Hot Chocolate

2 ½ 1-oz. squares unsweetened chocolate
½ cup hot water
2/3 cup sugar
Dash salt
½ tsp. vanilla (optional)
½ cup whipping cream, whipped

Heat chocolate and water over low heat, stirring until chocolate melts. Add sugar and salt and bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer for 4 minutes. Add vanilla. Cool to room temperature. Fold in whipped cream and store in refrigerator. When ready to serve, place 2 heaping Tbsp. in each cup and fill with hot 2% milk. Stir well.

Marshmallows (Martha Stewart, dontcha know)

2 envelopes unflavored gelatin
1 ½ cups sugar
2/3 cup light corn syrup
1/8 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pure vanilla
Cooking spray

Coat a 12-by-17-inch rimmed baking sheet with cooking spray; line with parchment paper. Spray parchment; set aside. Pour 1/3 cup cold water into the bowl of an electric mixer. Sprinkle with gelatin; let mixture soften, about 5 minutes. Place sugar, corn syrup, salt and 1/3 cup water in a medium saucepan. Cover; bring to a boil. Remove lid; cook, swirling pan occasionally, until syrup reaches 238 degrees (soft-ball stage) on a candy thermometer, about 5 minutes. With mixer on low speed, whisk gelatin mixture, and slowly pour the syrup in a steady stream down the side of the bowl. Gradually raise speed to high; beat until mixture is thick, white and has almost tripled in volume, about 12 minutes. Add vanilla and beat 30 seconds to combine. Pour mixture onto prepared baking sheet; smooth with an offset spatula. Let stand at room temperature, uncovered, until firm, at least 3 hours or overnight. Coat a 1 or 2-inch snowflake-shaped cookie cutter with cooking spray to prevent it from sticking. Cut out as many individual marshmallows as possible; coat cutter with more spray as needed. Sift confectioner’s sugar over both surfaces of marshmallows. Use marshmallows immediately or store in an airtight container at room temperature up to 1 week.

Other cutout shapes, like stars or snowmen would be fun as well and making this is a great activity for the family to do during Christmas vacation. Our guests at the inn were charmed by these floating on their hot chocolate/cocoa.