I first learned about drinking chocolate at Mount Vernon* during a family trip there.

One of the things I missed when we had to give up dairy was hot cocoa (I know you can use almond milk but it’s really just not the same). But while this is markedly different, it’s delicious enough that it fills the empty chocolatey space nicely. And if dairy is your thing, you can add a bit at the end for some extra creaminess.

Drinking Chocolate

Serves 2-3

Ingredients and supplies:

1/3 c sugar

1/3 c cocoa powder

dash salt

add-ins of your choice (see below)

wide mouth quart jar

wand blender (You could probably do this in a regular blender but we like the wand blender)

Method:

Combine sugar, cocoa powder, and salt in mason jar. Add boiled water to make about 1 1/2 or 2 cups altogether, then blend until well combined. stream in add-ins with the blender going. Taste, adjust flavorings and add-ins as needed, and serve.

Add-ins

Extract of your choice: standards include vanilla, almond, mint (a very little bit of mint goes a long way)

Heavy cream or Half and half

Whiskey, rum, or flavored liqueur of your choice, like kalhua

Candy cane

Whipped cream (use this as a topping, not streamed in, obviously)

*Mount Vernon is a peculiar mix of confronting the facts of slavery and standard white privilege denial. You can go and tour the slave quarters and read about what life was like for the three hundred and nineteen slaves living there at the time of George Washington’s death, and while it doesn’t go into too many details, they don’t hide the fact that these were, in fact, people who were owned. And yet, when we reached the end of our tour, there was a demonstration of how to make drinking chocolate “like Martha Washington herself would have made it.” Really? Ground the cacao pods into powder by herself, did she? Still, this stuff is delicious, and these days as long as you get fair or direct trade chocolate, you can even be sure no one has to be enslaved for you to drink it. So that’s nice.

We get ours from Costco right now, because I found Rodelle cocoa powder there and found this post on the internet about it (granted, it’s anecdotal and secondhand information but I chose to go with it for now; there’s also this on their website if you’re interested in reading further):

“Elise Neufeld says:

OCTOBER 3, 2013 AT 2:44 PM

Being concerned about cocoa powder, I contacted the company which supplies cocoa powder to our local Costco (Rodelle brand), and was shocked to get an email back within a few hours from their president. I was so impressed with his answer that I reproduced it below:

“It is very important to our company that our vanilla and cocoa are sustainably and socially sourced. Myself and our procurement team routinely visit our growing regions to personally audit our exporters and farming cooperatives for such issues you have mentioned. I was a Peace Corps volunteer many years ago and I learned at an early age how important it is that all parties are treated fairly throughout the supply chain especially when it comes to commodity food products in developing countries. We do source a number of “Fair Trade” products but I do feel that a lot still needs to be ironed out when it comes to the “Fair Trade” certification. Therefore we have established our own criteria based on working with transparent cooperatives supporting them with social programs and paying premium prices to the farmers. I am proud to say we have impacted over 15,000 farmers for the better by having such strict procedures in place. We do have more information on our website regarding our programs. ”

It’s good to know that even some of the bigger brands are committed to ethical sourcing!”