700

Yes, that’s right – this is post #700. I feel it deserves special note since I’ve been slacking off lately, what with being a slacker & all.

Meantime, carrying on the theme of Italian Hot Chocolate, I was sort of disappointed today. This morning I decided to open up that first packet of Ciobar. The reason for my disappointment was because, although I was able to understand the Italian instructions, I found out that 125 ml is only a bit over 4 ounces. That’s not a nice big mug full of cocoa!

My second mistake was due to pure laziness. I didn’t want to dirty a saucepan. I decided what the heck. Let’s just empty the packet into a mug, add a bit of milk and nuke it. Now in order to get this cocoa to the proper consistency, it needs to be cooked long enough. That’s easy to do in a saucepan but not quite as simple if you’re using a microwave. I ran into a little trouble. Hey, how was I supposed to know that 15 measly seconds would be the difference between all of it remaining in the mug and half of it being spewed all over the floor of the microwave??

I’ll tell you this – I did manage to scrape up as much as I could off that glass plate. The nice thick consistency did help with the scraping. And it didn’t taste half bad even though I can’t remember when the last time was that I actually cleaned that glass plate on the bottom of the microwave. But all that heat certainly would have killed any germs, right?

I’m still torn, though, about whether it tastes more like cocoa or chocolate. This will require more taste tests.

Oh, and if you go look back on yesterday’s post, Virginia was nice enough to leave a recipe in the comments and I added another one. I say we all have a huge hot chocolate cook off and see which one we like better. Feel free to mess with either or both recipes. Maybe even add in some Nutella…