 Today I'm making some hot chocolate and not just any hot chocolate, we're making it creamy and rich and decadent and something you're just going to love. And I'm using four basic ingredients, we're going to start with that, I'm going to show you that and you can actually make this into a gift and give it as a gift for Christmas let's say. But then I'm going to go ahead and embellish this with some extra flavorings and things that I think that make this over the top. It's super delicious. And the ingredients are all ingredients of course that you can feel good about, at least you can pronounce them. When you look at the Nestle's box and you read the ingredients and you see there's probably 13 different ingredients here and some of these, half of them I can't pronounce or I don't even know really what they are. So let's just toss that out and make some from scratch that is just as easy, maybe it takes five minutes more maybe and it's just so much better and it tastes fantastic. I'm Rockin' Robin and I'm going to show you how to do it right after our chef joke. Here's my first chef joke so I'll have another one a little bit later for you. So why did the hipster burn his mouth on the hot chocolate? Because he drank it before it was cool. Alright, let's get started on to our basic recipe that you can make just as easily as the instant stuff and it's just four ingredients. So we'll start off with our whole milk. You want to use whole milk because well it's a little bit richer and you need that. Now I'm using Goutard's Cocoa Rouge Cocoa Powder. This is a Dutch process product and you want to use that because it dissolves easily into liquids. It makes it nice and easy and it's just less acidic. It just has a nice flavor. Next we'll need some kind of sugar. So I'm using coconut sugar but you can use regular white sugar if you chose and some vanilla extract. And so if you combine these things together you can make your hot chocolate quick and easy and it is going to be delicious. Okay, so that was our basic version and it makes a great cup of hot chocolate or hot cocoa depending on what you want to call it but now I'm going to show you how we're going to do it and take it to the next level and just really bring out the chocolate flavor and the creaminess in this. Alright, so we're going to start with our cocoa powder. I'm going to take the Goutard's and you can see how rich and red and dark in color this is. I mean it's just amazing. We're going to take two tablespoons and I'm going to place it into my sauce pan here. And to that I'm going to add my coconut sugar. So pour that in and to that I'm going to add about a tablespoon or two of milk. And we're going to just blend this up into a paste and it's just going to help dissolve everything. And you can see what a nice little paste that's turned into, right? You want to just stir it up a little bit with a whisk until it's nice and smooth. Now to that I'm going to add the rest of my one cup of whole milk. Stir. Now I'm going to add a pinch of cinnamon. Not too much. You know this is an eighth of a teaspoon that I've got here and I'm not going to quite fill it. So it's just a nice pinch. My next chocolate flavor enhancer is some Expresso Instant Coffee, totally optional if you don't want to do it, but it really brings out the chocolatey flavor. So I'm going to do the same thing with that. It's not an eighth of a teaspoon, but it's just a little less like this. Toss that in. So next I'm going to add a quarter cup of half and half, which is half cream and half whole milk. And this makes it a bit more rich. So now we're going to add some baker's chocolate to this. This is 56% cacao, which means it's a little bit sweeter. I don't like it too dark. So but use what you want. And this adds some real depth to the chocolate flavor. So you want to chop this up so it dissolves quickly into the milk. And I'm using about 14 grams. It's two squares worth. I'm going to take, oh, one more thing is a pinch of salt. One little pinch. Now we're going to take this over to the heat and get it hot. So I'm heating this on low heat right now. You don't want this to burn. You don't want it to boil. So if you want to be real picky about it, you can take a thermometer like this, stick it in and monitor it. And when it gets to about 190 degrees, then you're good to go. So right now I'm at 108, 9, right around there. All right. So while we're waiting for this to heat up, I've got time for Chef Joke number two. Okay. So here we go. What is a French cat's favorite dessert? Chocolate mousse. All right. Let's check this. I think we're there. Yep. It's getting up there. It's at 189, 191. We're done. Turn the heat off. And we're going to add our vanilla. So I'm going to add an eighth of a teaspoon per serving, maybe a little extra. Let's stir that in and we're ready to pour it into our cup. I have my, it's got to be hot to be good mug here. But you want to make sure you leave room at the top if you want to add marshmallows or whipped cream. And I kind of went over the top there, but that's okay. Now you can certainly top this hot chocolate with some, I would recommend homemade whipping cream. That would be the best. And you're ready to go. I'm going to have mine plain today. Perfectly sweetened. I love the flavors. The chocolate is just nice and chocolatey. Like I said, so, so rich and delicious, but not overly rich. You know what I mean? I can drink a whole cup of this and I'm good. It's like dessert. If you'd like to try another chocolate recipe of mine, especially right now during the holiday season, I've got one for you. You really got to try. In fact, I just made a batch of this myself. It's my peppermint bark. I'm going to leave a link for you right here. Click that. Go check that out. Make it. And I tell you, it's quick and easy and very, very delicious. Don't forget to subscribe to my channel, smash the like button for me and leave me a comment. All right. Merry Christmas everybody. Have a great new year.