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Frigid Week Drink Recipe: Spiced Cocoa

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“This is a breakfast for chilly mornings.”—Master Chef Louis P. De Gouy, The Gold Cook Book (1947)

SPICED COCOA

Serves 6

2 Tbsp dry unsweetened cocoa
2 Tbsp sugar
Few grains salt
½ tsp ground cinnamon
Dash ground nutmeg
Dash ground cloves
2 C cold water
2 C thin cream or undiluted evaporated milk
½ tsp vanilla extract
Whipped cream (for serving)

Mix together cocoa, sugar, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves in a saucepan, stir in water, and, when mixed thoroughly and sugar is dissolved, bring to a boil and let boil 3 minutes. Stir in cream or milk, bring to a boil again, remove from flame, and beat with a rotary beater until frothy, beating in vanilla. Serve as hot as possible, each serving topped with whipped cream.

And for the younger set–

Left to right: rotary beater, potato masher, tortilla press, cheese grater

6 Responses

    1. Yes. Circular thing is tortilla press. Large pestle is a potato masher, though it could be used to mash other things as well.

      1. I’ve never seen a potato masher like that before, but I have most of the rest of the stuff, except for the copper stuff (and the potato masher).

        Back in the day, I couldn’t afford Jeff Smith’s books.

        I have memories of my fiancee and I watching his cooking show on the local PBS station. One of us would make notes on the process and the other would make notes on the ingredients. When the show was finished, we’d combine our notes. Some recipes never did work out.

        Now that I’m older, I have most of his cookbooks….and some of the recipes still “don’t work out”.

      2. I’m pretty sure it’s a potato masher but I could be wrong. I don’t know what else it would be. It’s large for a mortar, don’t you think?

        We haven’t had much trouble with his recipes that I recall. Like the show, a lot of what we like about the books is the stories.

        Do you have his Christmas book? The Frugal Gourmet Celebrates Christmas (1992). In it, he goes through the cast of the Nativity story and then discovered or imagined what they would have for a meal. Th Innkeeper has barley soup. (And it’s good.)

      3. I”m not sure if I have that one. They are all in storage. Frugal me….I got them *all* at 2nd hand or thrift stores.

        I searched for wooden potato masher on the internet and there were some images that looked just like the one you have pictured.

        It looks like it would also work well to mash cabbage for making sauerkraut.

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