I grew up on Swiss Miss hot chocolate - cocoa powder and hot water, as simple as that. While living in Paris, I tried rich thick hot chocolates that made my Swiss Miss alternative seem overly watery and lacking in flavor and texture. So, when I returned to NY, I became intrigued by the many different ways to make this simple drink more exquisite. Mexican hot chocolate is probably my favorite.

If you're looking to spice up your hot chocolate, you don't necessarily have to add anything to the combination besides water, milk, and chocolate. Think about using different kinds of chocolates. For example, a Mexican hot chocolate is made from chocolate that has often been blended with sugar, vanilla and spices, like cinnamon. Taza Chocolate in Somerville, Massachusetts produces a particularly delicious Mexican chocolate that you can purchase online. It's amazing what cinnamon does for hot chocolate.

Of course, you can also create different hot chocolates by adding some rum and a variety of creams. Check out these 8 remarkable hot chocolate recipes below and let us know which ones are your favorite:

1. Mexican Hot Chocolate
2. Belgian Hot Chocolate
3. Hot Chocolate from The Barefoot Contessa
4. Hot Chocolate Agasajo-Style
5. Hot Chocolate with Rum
6. Superrich Hot Chocolate with Coconut Cream
7. Hot Chocolate Passion
8. Martha Stewart's White Hot Chocolate

At New York City's Roasting Plant Coffee Company (81 Orchard St. between Broome and Grand streets, and 75 Greenwich Ave. at Seventh Ave., 212-775-7755), they have to-die-for hot chocolate. The recipe is shockingly simple, and you can make it at home!

The secret? Gelato.

Go buy a pint of your favorite chocolate gelato (dark chocolate is recommeneded), put a scoop in a mug, and let it melt. Add steamed milk to taste. Top it with marshmallows or whipped cream and chocolate chips (right). Done! Classy, frothy hot chocolate with a divine, rich flavor.

If you want pre-melted gelato at your beck and call (pour steamed milk on frozen gelato and you get "lukewarm chocolate"), keep some in your fridge in a sealable tupperware container, and use it within two days.

[via Tasting Table]

The Fancy Food Show is starting to become a distant memory, as the demands of regular old work and life push their back into the forefront of my mind. However, there are a few products that continue to stick with me and continue to marvel me with their absolute deliciousness.

One such product is Cocio. It doesn't look like much, in fact it's nothing more than chocolate milk in a bottle. However, it is the best chocolate milk I've ever tasted. It is sweet, but not cloying, thick without being sludgy and every so chocolate-y. It is a Danish product that has been around since 1951 and in that country, is often consumed as street food, in conjunction with sausages (at least according to Wikipedia). It is also all natural, made of nothing more than chocolate, sugar (no high fructose corn syrup here) and milk. If you think of yourself as a chocolate milk connoisseur, this is a product to seek out.

I know it's a couple of days after St. Patrick's Day and spring is coming up and we're all supposed to be thinking about flowers and running through meadows and wearing shorts, but I hate spring and summer and I'm not quite ready to release winter from my cold hands yet. So, here's a hot chocolate recipe with a little kick.

It's the Bachelor Buzz, and besides hot chocolate it contains raspberry syrup, hazelnut syrup, and espresso. I'm not quite sure what makes this bachelor-ish, but pretend you're drinking it in some swingin' pad.

I've loved experimenting with drinking chocolates this winter. Swirling shaved chocolate into a saucepan of milk produces a far better result than anything I achieve with hot cocoa mix. I usually use dark chocolate, and sometimes add sugar until the mixture reaches my desired sweetness. That is, until recently -- the mother of my close friend is Colombian, and she brought us a bar of Colombian chocolate designed for melting into hot beverages. I can't get enough of it.

The bar is already sweetened perfectly, so you just add it to hot milk and allow it to melt. Once melted, you beat the mixture with a molinillo -- a chocolate whisker with designs native to Colombia, Mexico and other Latin American countries. The result is a deliciously foamy drink with a great chocolate kick. The product I used is called Sweet Chocolate, and the brand is Sol. I found the cheapest bar ($3.99) at Latin Pantry. But I'm sure there are others out there from Colombia as well as from other countries, so please share your favorites!

If you don't have a molinillo, you can use a normal whisk to achieve ideal foaminess. Feel free to add cinnamon as they do in Colombia, or syrups and extracts of your choice.

Winter has made a comeback in the Northeast today. We're supposed to get 8 to 10 inches in my area, so I'm in one of those "hot chocolate, read a book, watch some DVDs on the couch" sort of moods, so I thought I'd post a hot chocolate recipe.

But this isn't just for one cup of hot chocolate, it's a mix you can store so you don't have to keep making one cup at a time. I've been meaning to try the recipe that Tyler Florence made on one of his holiday shows on Food Network a while back but I haven't. This one comes from Epicurious.com and it has a hint of vanilla (or maybe it's more than a hint, who knows). It makes 24 servings.

Mmmm...hot chocolate. Is there any other drink that is so tied-in and associated with a season than hot chocolate's association with winter? It truly is the comfort drink of the season.

For this happy hour, I figured I'd find something that was hot chocolate, but kicked up a notch* for the adults who read Slashfood. This Grown-Up Hot Chocolate has Ghirardelli chocolate chips and cocoa as the main ingredient, along with amaretto. You can substitute a hazelnut, orange, or coffee liqueur or peppermint schnapps or extract. The link above has a bunch of other winter cocktail recipes too, including Baroque, Glogg, and Silk Stocking.

* Seriously, I don't mean this in an "Emeril Lagasse" sort of way.

It's really chilly here in the Northeast. I love the cold weather, it's just that the first big chill of the season can be shocking, especially since we had such an oddly warm October. This is the first time I had to turn on the heat this fall.

So how about some hot chocolate? Having a nice hot mug of hot chocolate on a cold evening is one of the great things in life. Here's a recipe for Easy Mexican Hot Chocolate (which includes cinnamon and chili powder) and here's one for Avenue' S Hot Chocolate (though I've never had Valrhona chocolate). Here's one that uses coffee from The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, and Jamie Oliver has one he calls The Best Hot Chocolate. I wanted to try this recipe for Hot Cocoa and Homemade Marshmallows from Tyler Florence last year but didn't. I'll correct that this holiday season (though I have to admit I'll probably go with packaged marshmallows or Fluff instead of making my own).

So you have to work tomorrow, how about one more drink tonight before you go to bed?

This is the Chocolate Kiev. I'm not a big vodka drinker (ever since drinking too much in one night many years ago), so I'm not familiar with vanilla vodka, but this one sounds like it has a good kick but enough chocolate sweetness too.

Chocolate Kiev

1 oz hot cocoa mix
4 oz hot milk
1 oz vanilla vodka
3/4 oz Amaretto

Combine in a mug, and stir well.

Is it cold where you are right now? I mean cold enough to get a nice cup of hot chocolate and get all cozy on the couch? Yeah, it isn't here either. Though it's finally gotten cool after a couple of weeks of 73 degree days (that's just not right in the middle/end of October). I'm starting to get into that fall/hot chocolate mindset, and found this page at WhatsCookingAmerica.net that explains the history of hot chocolate. It makes for interesting reading, and includes several hot chocolate recipes, like the one after the jump for Angelina's Hot Chocolate, from the Angelina Cafe in Paris.

Flavanols are the chemicals in chocolate, as well as in wine and teas, that are responsible for many of the nutritional bonuses that it offers, including improved circulation and general heart health. These antioxidants have also been shown to increase the flow of blood to the brain in research presented to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Increased blood flow to the brain has been associated with improved cognitive performance in healthy people, as it carries more oxygen to the brain than when high-flavanol cocoa is not eaten. Since one of the symptoms of dementia is a decrease in the flow of blood to the brain, scientists think that cocoa that is high in flavanols could be used to decrease the impact of the disease.

Unfortunately, many commercial chocolates are low in flavanols, so you probably won't experience any of the benefits demonstrated by this study if you eat an extra Snickers bar. The reason for this is that flavanols add a bitter taste to chocolate, which many manufacturers - especially of sweet milk chocolates - prefer to eliminate from their final products. An exception to this is CocoaVia, which is specifically infused with flavanols. CocoaVia aside, the highest concentration of flavanols is found in cocoa, meaning that dark chocolate is a better choice for your health than milk chocolate, but a cup of hot cocoa is going to be your best bet.

So today is not only Valentine's Day, it's also a great day for hot chocolate (for much of the country, anyway...you stay classy San Diego). So let's combine the two and see what we get.

And that would be Hot Chocolate Cones! They're cocoa, mini marshmallows, mini chocolate chips, and a red gum drop placed inside cone-shaped cellophane wrappers. Makes a cool gift:

3/4 cup cocoa mix
two 6" x 12" cone-shaped cellophane bags
2 clear rubberbands
scissors
1/4 cup mini chocolate chips
3/4 cup mini marshmallows
1 large red gumdrop

Have you ever had a food or drink item that hit the spot perfectly? Something that was the perfect thing at the perfect time? I had that yesterday.

For some reason I decided to take the train into Boston yesterday and walk around in 9 degree weather (and it was windy so the wind chill blah blah blah). It was, um, really cold, and by the end of the day my feet were killing me and my face, ears, and lungs had gotten a workout from the weather. And that's when I saw the Dunkin' Donuts at the train station when I arrived for my train. I thought to myself, "I gotta have a hot chocolate." I got a medium, and it was one of the best hot chocolates I've ever had. It was the true definition of "hitting the spot." It was quite an enjoyable train ride home.

The hot chocolate has an almost chocolate/vanilla taste. When you were a kid did you ever get a Hoodsie (that's chocolate and vanilla ice cream for you folks who haven't had one) and mix the two together so they were one and then eat it? That's what it tasted like, only hot. More chocolate for sure, but with a lighter flavor in the background And it's really creamy. I like it.

Is this the same as their Chocolate Sensation that was introduced a few years ago? I saw this on the shelf and didn't find the other stuff, so I'm wondering if they've replaced that Chocolate Sensation with dark chocolate, which seems to be all the rage now.

I like it. It tastes a little different than other dark hot cocoas are on the market, the more expensive brands. This one actually tastes like they took big hunks of dark chocolate and melted them in hot liquid. That's not an insult, by the way, I like the way this tastes.

It's also a hot chocolate that isn't ruined if you add a bit of milk, even though it already has milk in it and you just add water. I've followed the instructions to a T (6 oz of hot water for each packet), so I'm not sure what happens if you have a big mug and add more hot water than that.

Update: Hmmm...I found this for sale on Amazon, and even though it says "Dark Chocolate Sensation," it shows the old "Chocolate Sensation" box. Am I drinking the old stuff under a new name? Have my taste buds been deceived?

How do you like your hot chocolate? Whatever your preference, be it kicked up with a shot of your favorite liqueur or thick and decadent, at least one of the 60 recipes in Michael Turback's Hot Chocolate will suit your tastes perfectly. This single-subject volume is comprehensive in its coverage of drinkable chocolates and, rather than simply listing variations on one basic recipe, it covers all the major trends in the genre: European chocolates, modern "haute" chocolates, adult/spiked hot chocolates and "second childhood" hot chocolates. Following the recipes, he even includes a brief selection of recipes to pair with the drinks. The part of the book that chocolate lovers might find to be the most interesting is the introduction, where Turback discusses the types and uses of chocolates, spices, sweeteners and everything else that goes into making a great cup of cocoa. This information sets the reader up beautifully to explore new flavor combinations on top of those included by the author. If you're looking for a specifically Christmas drink, Eggnog Hot Chocolate is one recipe from this book that is worth a look. Other tempting drinks include Hot Butterscotch with White Chocolate, Key Lime Pie Hot Chocolate, Roasted Hazelnut Hot Chocolate and Matcha Hot Chocolate.