Homemade Gingerbread Hot Chocolate

The ISFA work continues — another kitchen table this week, another young family with numbers that might work. I sat across from a couple in Story County and laid out the grants and watched their faces change from fear to possibility, and the change is the thing I live for now.

The recipe this week: lemon chicken with capers. Standing at the stove, Marlene's wooden spoon in my hand (the cracked one, the one that will outlast us all), the recipe either from the card box or from my own expanding collection, both equally real, both equally mine. The kitchen holds all of it — the old recipes and the new ones, the teacher's food and the student's food, the grief and the joy and the cinnamon. All of it. Always.

Seed starting continues at the Holloway household — the windowsill green, the grow lights purple, the soil mix precise. The annual miracle of February and March: things grow even when everything says they shouldn't. The growing is the argument against everything.

I wasn’t planning to make hot chocolate — I was still thinking about that couple’s faces in Story County, and about the cracked wooden spoon, and about the windowsill green under the grow lights — but the kitchen asked for something warm and the seeds on the sill seemed to agree. This gingerbread hot chocolate is the kind of thing you make when you need the cinnamon the story already knows about, when you need your hands wrapped around something that reminds you that small, deliberate warmth is its own kind of argument.

Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cook Time: 10 minutes | Total Time: 15 minutes | Servings: 2

Ingredients

2 cups whole milk
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 tablespoons dark brown sugar, packed
1 teaspoon molasses
3/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Pinch of fine sea salt
Whipped cream, for serving (optional)
Pinch of cinnamon or cocoa powder, for dusting (optional)

Instructions

Combine the dry spices. In a small saucepan, whisk together the cocoa powder, brown sugar, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and salt until evenly blended.
Add the milk gradually. Pour in about 1/4 cup of the milk and whisk the mixture into a smooth paste with no dry lumps. This step keeps the cocoa from clumping.
Heat and whisk. Pour in the remaining milk and add the molasses. Set the saucepan over medium heat and warm, whisking frequently, until steaming and just beginning to bubble at the edges — about 6 to 8 minutes. Do not boil.
Finish with vanilla. Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla extract. Taste and adjust sweetness with an extra pinch of brown sugar if desired.
Serve. Pour into two mugs. Top each with a dollop of whipped cream and a light dusting of cinnamon or cocoa powder if you like. Wrap both hands around the mug. Take a breath.

Nutrition (per serving)

Homemade Gingerbread Hot Chocolate — The Kitchen That Holds All of It