Cocoa Date

Well, nobody can usually accuse us of being overly cute, but this year I did come up with a fun idea for Carl and me in December: the 25 "holi-dates," advent ideas for potentially-adorable couple activities. I think we only actually got to about three during December, but today we more than made up for things.

The idea? A cocoa tasting.

Although I have always loved the idea of hot chocolate, for most of my life (including as a child as as a mom) my experience of it has been a thin chocolate moment wedged between a burnt tongue and a mouthful of not-yet-melty marshmallow. I vowed to change all of that for our happy hour today, baking raspberry shortbread and Lebkuchen. The latter were an absolute joy for Carl--I finally got "right" his beloved taste of spiced cookies from childhood memories from Germany. With a snappy little lemon glaze? Yes, please. Who cares that Christmas is now a full month in the rear view?

I bought various commercial cocoas and read a bunch of different recipes for hot chocolate, in anticipation of our hot date. We agreed the best-tasting one was Equal Exchange's Dark. Excellent chocolate flavor, if you prefer dark to milk chocolate like we do.

AND...I found a recipe that's a complete an utter antidote to the sad hot chocolates of my childhood and my sons'. It's from a post by "Hummingbird High" and is dramatic and fun to make, since it essentially involves making fluffy chocolate whipped cream and adding it to hot vanilla milk. So dreamy!

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And a little note about the Chocolate Mousse restaurant where we got the awesome mug: It was way up in Ely, MN, where we used to go with Carl's folks for summer vacations. We enjoyed watching their loon-calling content and toasted our anniversary together there in August of 2015.