Super-Chocolate Hot Cocoa

I adore chocolate - the darker the better.  I am giddy with excitement over all the new dark chocolate products that have been hitting the shelves over the past few years.  Have you tried the new Reese's Dark Peanut Butter Cups?  My, oh my.  These little darlings are heavenly.  It will be a sad, sad day if they ever stop making these beauties.  Anyway!  Speaking of chocolate, I have been inspired by fellow blogger Spleeness to make a post about my favorite way to make hot cocoa.

Now I'm sure there are some cocoa purists who prefer to make their hot chocolate from scratch. I am much less patient and always start with prepackaged cocoa.  (Is hot cocoa the same thing as hot chocolate? I tend to use the terms interchangably.  Forgive me if this is some sort of cocoa faux-pas.)  I used to buy Nestle's Rich Chocolate hot cocoa until Swiss Miss came out with their Dark Chocolate Sensation.  Woohoo! After my first sip of this stuff I was totally ruined for any other hot cocoa mix. But dark chocolate is like a drug.  After a while I just need more, MORE, MORE!  And that, my friends, is how I came to develop my Super-Chocolate Hot Cocoa. 

I've tried adding extra cocoa mix to the mug to make it more chocolatey, but you can really only get it so chocolatey without making mud. Then one day while grocery shopping, I strolled down the baking aisle and my eyes landed upon the little plastic boxes of baking cocoa powder.  Hershey's Special Dark cocoa powder?  Brilliant! 

This is now an essential ingredient in any mug of hot cocoa. 

A Heaping Teaspoon of Special Dark Cocoa Powder

Make sure you mix the cocoa powder in with the cocoa mix really well before you add the hot water.  Again there are probably some cocoa purists out there shrieking about making cocoa with water.  You will RUIN this cocoa if you use milk!  The milk will only dilute the dark chocolatey goodness of this cocoa.  You've been warned. 

                                                                                                                                                                                  Before and after mixing the cocoas together. See how much darker it is now? Mmm... This cocoa is going over to the dark side!      

Now add about half of the hot water and stir well so you get the powder mixed well and won't have any dry puffs of cocoa floating on top of your hot chocolate.  Then add the rest of your hot water, stir again and enjoy!  This Super-Chocolate Hot Cocoa is excellent for dipping Chips Ahoy! Chunky Chocolate Chip cookies into.  Great noms for chocolate lovers! 

I'd have taken pictures of how yummy the cookies look after being dipped into this super-rich dark chocolate cocoa, but they mysteriously disappeared before I could get the pictures taken. I don't know how that happened...