Game Night...And Our Cocoa Recipe

We had "Game Night" here at our house on Saturday night.  

We still have movie/picnic night every Friday night...and we all thought it would be fun to designate Saturday as Game Night.  

We're going to let the children take turns picking out the game that we all play.  Depending on how long the game is, we'll see how many children get to pick out games that particular Saturday night.  And then we'll keep track of whose turn it is when we pick back up the next weekend.

(Thankfully, the game that Daniel wanted us to play had NOT been packed up yet, but we might run into some problems during the next few weeks!)

We all enjoy this particular game - Qwirkle

Another request Daniel made on Saturday night was for some hot cocoa. This boy loves him some hot cocoa.  (Well, now he loves it...once he ventured out and figured out that vanilla wasn't the only yummy flavor around.) He asks for it all the time in the "winter" (if you can call what we get here in the south "winter"...Jas says you can't).

And being the good mama that I am, I want to oblige.  But when I started looking at the ingredients list on the boxed hot chocolates...YOW!!!  The Swiss Miss classic mix has partially hydrogenated soybean oil?  And some of their other formulations have fake sugars and other hard-to-pronounce ingredients.  (I've finally come to realize that "Sugar Free" and "NO Sugar Added" is code for "Poisonous Fake Sweetener", like the sucralose found in these mixes.)

So, last year when one of my favorite little blog's had a recipe for Hot cocoa, I was thrilled.  

And my kids have been thrilled also, if you can't tell:

I've reduced the amount of evaporated cane juice/sugar from Amanda's original, and I took out the vanilla (my kiddos didn't want the vanilla flavoring in the cocoa)...and this is what we're using now:

Homemade Hot Cocoa

Combine in a saucepan:

1/4 - 3/8 c. evaporated cane juice (the Wally carries it now!)

1/4 c. cocoa powder  (I buy Frontier brand fair-trade cocoa through our co-op)

dash salt  (I use Real Salt)

1/3 c. hot water

 

Bring to a boil and boil for 2 minutes.  

Then add 4 c. milk  (I use our whole, raw milk), and heat to drinking temperature.  Enjoy!