Hot Chocolate: Homemade and so good

Three recipes to chase away the brrrrrrrs of winter

Bonjour! Bonjour!

Hot chocolate! Just putting the two words together evokes coziness. Hot chocolate by the fire (writing that sends me to the Bistro in Louise Penny’s mythical village of Three Pines). Hot chocolate on the slopes. Hot chocolate in the kitchen – of course, you’re in pajamas; maybe even fuzzy slippers. Hot chocolate after sledding – Joshua, if you’re reading this, do you remember having hot chocolate after going down the “sledding hill” in Riverside Park? Hot chocolate after a walk in the snow. Hot chocolate after shoveling the snow (that would be hot chocolate as comfort and reward). When I was a kid, we’d get hot chocolate when we’d come in from skating or making snowmen. Back then, I loved the idea of it, and I loved how good it felt to wrap my hands around the hot cup. But it wasn’t until I was an adult that I came to like actual hot chocolate as much as I liked the idea of it, because it was only as a grown-up that I had real hot chocolate – my mom, like so many busy…