The 12 Weeks of Christmas: Movie Edition-Week 8

The 12 Weeks of Christmas: Movie Edition-Week 8

The Polar Express 

I thought I would write this up before I crash any harder. This week, featured not one, not two, but three hot cocoa recipes and I have to give them all a fair try to decide which were my favorites. That and the milkshake I had with lunch pretty much ensures an epic sugar crash I can feel coming. Time to chug lots of water and eat some peanut butter. Not sure if that helps clear out the sugar, but it can't hurt...

The Polar Express isn't a movie you think of for food, but it does have an epic song and dance scene devoted to hot chocolate. I don't eat chocolate, thanks to another epic sugar crash years ago, but I have been saving up white chocolate versions to try out and this was the chance!

I was surprised at how an idea of non-chocolate-based "cocoa" for lack of a better term, could come up with such different versions. Each has slightly different ingredients, and amounts of them, and turned out to look really different from each other.

First up, Snow Cocoa. This recipe is the only one that doesn't use white chocolate. It uses a lot of vanilla and sugar for its flavor. For an ingredient list that is so simple, this is a really tasty recipe. I found it a bit too sweet, so I would probably cut the amount in half. The vanilla really brings the flavor. I liked this one a lot. This recipe says it's from allrecipes.com, but when I looked it up, I wasn't able to find it, so I felt comfortable sharing it here.

Next up is the Spice White Chocolate, taken from a cookbook, so I can't share the recipe here. This one had white chocolate chips and milk, along with cinnamon and nutmeg. Cinnamon is a common flavoring in hot chocolate, specifically Mexican hot chocolate, but I've never had any with nutmeg before and it was a great edition! Nutmeg is a natural pairing with milk-based drinks and sauces, so I'm not surprised it worked so well. It just never occurred to me to try it, but I highly recommend it!

And last but not least, is the Trader Joe's recipe for coconut milk-based cocoa. This can be found on their website, too. This one ended up being my favorite of the three. It was delicate, the least sweet, but very flavorful. Vanilla and cinnamon are the main flavorings for this, and are very well-balanced. 

These are the ingredients for all three recipes, except the the jar of nutmeg, not in this shot.

I decided to make all three at the same time. Luckily I have multiple whisks so there was no flavor blending.

Here they are after stirring and heating through.

All of these recipes were super easy to make, and can be doubled or halved as needed. I would drink any of these again, but maybe not all at the same time! The next time you come in from the snow, you should definitely make one of these to warm up with!