Hot Stuff, Baby

I like hot chocolate. It just sounds luxurious to me. I think of people sitting around a fireplace, sipping it as they listen to holiday music and have quiet conversation ....or sitting at a fine restaurant, drinking it slowly from elegantly designed china cups as they nibble on fine pastries.

I like to read things like this, which I found here:

Angelina’s Hot Chocolate

The Angelina Cafe in Paris, open since 1903, serves a thick hot chocolate version in demitasse cups with a tiny dollop of mascarpone and whipped cream....It is incredibly easy to prepare by mixing chocolate shavings with hot water. You can serve it in small cups or in 17th-century style chocolate pots and demitasse cups.

6 ounces fine-quality semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, chopped

1/4 cup water, room temperature

3 tablespoons hot water

3 cups hot milk, divided

Sugar to taste

Whipped cream, if desired

In a double boiler over low heat, combine chocolate and 1/4 cup water until melted, stirring occasionally; stir until smooth. Remove top of double boiler. Whisk in 3 tablespoons hot water. Pour into pitcher or divide among 4 individual mugs. Either stir 3/4 cup hot milk into each mug or serve milk in a separate pitcher. Pass sugar and whipped cream in separate bowls; add to taste.
Makes 4 servings.

However, liking and doing are entirely different things. I like to read over recipes like that and contemplate what they'd be like to make... but I usually don't actually make them, because when I do, they don't turn out anything like the article's illustrations. I think of it like those people who really do go forward with non-traditional sexual acts, like being into bondage, or fetishes: I can't believe that inside they aren't thinking Man, do I feel silly. I'd have the same feeling as I gazed down at what was supposed to be a finely made and elegantly presented hot chocolate with grated nutmeg and chocolate shavings: Man, I could have just gotten out the Ovaltine.

Thats the mix of choice at our house. When I was but a lad, it was Nestle's Quik (my cousin always pronounced it Nessels, but we knew that it was supposed to be Nest-Lees); as I got older, we switched to Ovaltine (the crunchy granules in the brown glass jar) and then the powdered version. The method of mixing was immaterial, though my daughter -- charming child -- insists that I made the best hot chocolate because I mix in the chocolate, then heat the whole thing, adding a bit of cold milk at the end, whereas the Other Parental Unit heats the milk first, then adds the chocolate. She'll drink it either way, of course.

Ovaltine is cool, but I admit it, guiltily: from time to time, I still think about those chocolate shavings.