Hot Chocolate Brings Joy

On a cold winter day, when the breeze sends chills through your body and the tip of your nose turns bright red from the nipping wind, all you can do is rub your hands together and stomp your feet to bring some heat to your body.

Until you get home. Then you think of the perfect drink to warm you up, hot chocolate.

Hot chocolate is a winter drink that many people use to warm up when the days turn cold and it seems that not even the thickest blankets can keep out the chill. Sweet and … well, chocolatey … many people mix it to their own liking, adding marshmallows, whipped cream, and sometimes even candy canes.

“The best hot chocolate ever in my opinion is when you use el chocolate abuelita,” said freshman Marley Sanchez Cuevas, “and dissolve it with milk then use a whisk to make it nice and fluffy and you can add mini marshmallows or have it with warm conchas/pan dulce.”

Hot chocolate nowadays is often made in the microwave – an easy option of putting milk in a mug, heating it for two minutes and adding a premixed packet of sweetened cocoa powder. Back in the day, however, you had to make it on the stove.

“It was before the microwave was invented you would do everything on the stove,” said Jessica Arner, a volunteer in Journalism class who is also a cocoa fan who has it every morning since she learned to make it as a child. “My mother showed me that you have to watch the little bubbles form around the pan where the milk starts to steam.”

Stories like these are what makes many people love hot chocolate — not only does it warm you up physically but it also warms up your heart to those memories that the whiff of chocolate brings right back.

“For me,” Marely said, “it just reminds me of the warm feeling of being in Mexico.”