I am a choco-vore and I'm ok.

This post hopes to serve a few functions, as follows:

1. First and foremost, this will demonstrate that I like chocolate, and that, in fact, I like chocolate more than you do.
2. It will let me try my hand at my very first gen-u-ine food-bloggy blog post, complete with recipe. And photos!
   
3. The photos will illustrate whether or not the crappy built-in iPhone camera has any practical use in a food blog whatsoever. Fingers crossed.
   
4. Finally, it will put Santa, the father's day bunny and/or the birthday fairie on-notice that a digital SLR camera always makes the perfect gift.

Please bear in mind that the following extreme chocolate beverage is professional-grade, prescription-strength, need-a-signed-permission-slip-from-your-mommy chocolaty. If you don't enjoy nibbling on 85% cacao dark chocolate (Lindt is my favorite), you will not like this. (In that case, just tone-down the cocoa powder. Way down.)

Let me put it another way: The only way that this hot chocolate could be more manly would be to add bacon to it.  (Note to self: Research homemade bacon marshmallows. Would the puffy sissiness of the marshmallow evaporate in the presence of bacon's manly ... uh ... presence? Or would they annihilate each other and make a black hole in the kitchen, again? Hmmm.)

PATENTLY UNREASONABLE HOT CHOCOLATE

Ingredients:
1 cup of milk, more or less, in a 12 oz. or larger mug
1 small handful of chocolate chips (1)
scant 1/4 cup of Dutch-processed cocoa powder (2)

Ingredient notes:
(1): I've never measured these ingredients before, so for this post, I counted the number of chocolate chips I grabbed ... 42! Any competent geek knows what an auspicious number that is.
(2): Use good cocoa powder, because it can't hide behind any other flavors in this recipe. I'm happy with Hershey's Natural. I've been unhappy with Hershey's Special Dark cocoa the bulk stuff at our local natural foods store.

Grab, you know, enough chocolate chips.



Do this:
Add chocolate chips to the milk, then microwave on high for around 45 seconds. This should get the milk hot enough to melt the chocolate. Add cocoa powder and incorporate with wire whisk. Holding whisk between both palms, rub palms back and forth to spin whisk rapidly and thoroughly blend the mixture. (Or, bust-out your fancy-pants immersion blender and use that.) Microwave for another 45 seconds, keeping constant watch. Stop heating just before the mixture boils over. Optional: Blend with whisk again and microwave for another 15 seconds or so. This seems to help the cocoa thicken the drink in a very lovely way.

Whisk like mad.

Ding!

Bonus factoid: Did you know that Hershey's Cocoa's plastic tub is top-load dishwasher safe? Nice of them to tell us.