Hot chocolate and stuff
Recently I’ve had cause to revisit hot chocolate vs. hot cocoa. It’s a…heated rivalry. Eh? SEE WHAT I DID THERE?
As a wee lad I didn’t really think there was a difference because I didn’t examine why there were two different terms for what was essentially the same thing. BUT OH NO. THEY ARE NOT THE SAME.
I mean: They both start at a baseline of delicious. If you’re a kid and you’re given something with sugar in it, you will naturally think it’s awesome and not ask too many questions about nuanced flavours. “Mother? Can we seek an earthiness and perhaps a shred of coconut?” was not something it would ever occur to us to ask.
But dang, when you get older and develop a palate, you’re ready for nuance. So: hot cocoa is made with cocoa powder. Hot chocolate is made with actual chocolate. And as you are no doubt aware, there are many varieties of chocolate out there. It can really turn hot chocolate season into an adventure. So let me encourage you to treat yourself to something extraordinary during this time in the cold.
Lately I've been enjoying this (made for one, just double or triple or quadruple as needed):
1 cup o’ moo juice
1 splash o’ vanilla extract
A few shakes o’ ground nutmeg
Sugar to taste (I don’t want it turbo sweet, just enough to make my inner child smile)
half a bar of 90% cacao dark chocolate, bitter as heck, full of fiber and antioxidants
You get the moo juice and stuff heated up on the stove, stirring a bit to get that sugar dissolved, and while that’s happening you chop up that half-bar into wee chips and chonks, which will help them melt and mix faster. You add those in once the milk gets warm, then keep stirring till it’s hot and looking like hot chocolate should. THEN: FROTH IT. One of those cheap milk immersion frothers really kicks it up a notch. Gods below, y’all, it’s downright decadent, the depth and richness of it. Just way beyond what you can do with cocoa powder.
And yeah, there’s so much else to be done! You can add minty thingies if you like. Cinnamon, other spices. Whipped cream, heck yeah. Back in ye olde days, I might have added peppermint schnapps. And I’m gonna try making some with that orange chocolate at some point. Do you have a favorite variation? Let me know in the comments!
We're coming to the end of the year—paid subscribers will get their last story of the year soon featuring Archdruid Owen and one of his apprentices, and then most renewals will happen in January for another year of stories! Gotta thank y’all again for your support, and the free audiobook version narrated by Luke Daniels should be available for you to download in April, just as we did this year for Oberon’s Bathtime Stories. This year’s collection will be called The Great Big Bear & Other Stories of the Iron Druid Chronicles.
In the meantime, I have a novel announcement and an RPG coming next year, and I’m working on a mystery/thriller set in Toronto.
Right now I’m reading a couple of crimey-crime books set in the UK that are part of a series. One is the Slough House series by Mick Herron, now adapted to a TV series starring Gary Oldman called Slow Horses. The books are gritty and folks die but they’re also amusingly written, so I’ve been enjoying them. Currently on book six, Joe Country. The other is a series set in Edinburgh following a detective named Rebus.
Joe Country
In Slough House, the London outpost for disgraced MI5 spies, memories are stirring, all of them bad. Catherine Standish is buying booze again, Louisa Guy is raking over the ashes of lost love, and new recruit Lech Wicinski, whose sins make him an outcast even among the slow horses, is determined to discover who destroyed his career, even if he tears his life apart in the process.
Meanwhile, in Regent’s Park, Diana Taverner’s tenure as First Desk is running into difficulties. If she’s going to make the Service fit for purpose, she might have to make deals with a familiar old devil . . .
And with winter taking its grip, Jackson Lamb would sooner be left brooding in peace, but even he can’t ignore the dried blood on his carpets. So when the man responsible for killing a slow horse breaks cover at last, Lamb sends the slow horses out to even the score.
Let It Bleed
In the dark days and biting windstorms of an Edinburgh winter, two drop-out kids dive off the towering Forth Road Bridge. A civic office is spattered by a grisly gun-blast. Two suicides and a murder that just don't add up, unless John Rebus can crunch the numbers. Following a trail that snakes through stark alleys and sad bars, shredded files and lacerated lives, Rebus finds himself up against an airtight, murderous conglomerate on the make in every arena of power. It's leeching the life and soul out of his city and, if it can, him too...
Hey. I hope you have mega turbo super snuggly holidays. A hearty congratulations for surviving this year, and let’s hope we all get to celebrate good news next year.
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