Homemade Hot Chocolate Mix

We go through a lot of hot chocolate mix in our house, Swiss Miss being the preferred brand. In the winter months, about once a week K will make a dinner out of peanut butter toast and hot chocolate, dunking the toast in the chocolate before each and every bite.

When it's pb toast night, I eat mine with milky black tea (no dunking), but I still like a cup 'o cocoa now and then. But have you read the Swiss Miss label? Basically, it's chocolate-flavored corn syrup. I want the real deal, or at least something not involving laboratory food creations.

So I started experimenting with hot chocolate mixes. I tried the one on the side of the Hershey's cocoa powder can...not so good, too chalky and too much stuff stuck on the bottom. I thought about my mom's hot chocolate mix recipe, but knowing it uses a ton of non-dairy creamer, it wasn't an option. I checked AllRecipes.com, Martha Stewart, random holiday blogs, but nearly everything used non-dairy creamer, ugh.

Then I landed on Food Network. Alton Brown to the rescue! His hot cocoa mix recipe is actually hidden within a video clip. His videos are, um, kooky, but his food principles are solid, so I wrote down the recipe and tried it out.

Ding ding ding! We have a winner!

Alton Brown's Hot Chocolate Mix

1 and 1/4 cups powdered milk

1 cup powdered sugar

1/2 cup cocoa powder

1 teaspoon cornstarch

1/2 teaspoon salt

The teeniest, tiniest pinch of cayenne pepper

Add all ingredients to a clean, dry container with lid (like a large glass canning jar) and shake it up, baby.

Fill your favorite mug 1/3 full of mixture. Add enough boiling water to fill cup halfway, then use a whisk to mix into a slurry (be sure you catch all the mix off the sides of the mug, too). Top off the mug with additional boiling water to fill, mix once more and enjoy.

Peanut butter toast optional.