Archive for April 5th, 2009

Hot chocolate and cinnamon toast are my favorite snack. My grandmother used to fix this for me when I was very small, and I sat on the step ladder in her small kitchen, eating off of her light blue melmac dishes and feeling a lovely sentiment of safety and well being.  If you’ve had a difficult day, or you just feel the weight of the world, ten minutes of a snack of hot chocolate and cinnamon toast could give you a new perspective. 

To make the hot chocolate: put about 1/2 inch of warm water in the bottom of a mug. Now add a heaping teaspoon full of cocoa powder and about twice as much sugar. Stir until it becomes like a syrup. Now fill the cup with milk and stir. Put in the microwave for about 1 minute — it depends on the microwave and the size of the mug. Once it’s warm, put in a couple of mini marshmallows. My current “rule” is I can have enough to cover the top of the milk, but may not heap the marshmallows in a pile. If you have nothing but big marshmallows, cut them into eights or you can’t drink them easily. Some also put whipping cream on top the cocoa, especially in restaurants, but I prefer marshmallows.

To make the toast, make sure the butter you plan to use is soft enough. Making toast with cold butter is only for the advanced. Put the bread (preferably thin sliced white, though you can make cinnamon toast with other types) in the toaster and when it pops, put on about 1 tsp butter or slightly more if you feel you can get away with it. Have a mix of cinnamon sugar — I use about 1 tsp. cinnamon and 1/4 cup of sugar, but that’s pretty strong — in a small bowl and pour some of it on the just-buttered toast, just enough so the toast is covered. Shake the extra cinnamon sugar off the toast, back into the bowl. Just the right amount should remain, turning a golden brown because it’s soaked with butter. Now it’s ready to eat. Find a comfortable spot and crunch into the toast, then take a sip of cocoa. Hopefully, if you’re like me, your cares will lift for a few moments, the weight of the world will be lighter, and you’ll think, “surely the world is still an okay place, because I can still eat cinnamon toast and chocolate milk.”