Hot cocoa

It seems almost a right of passage for a child to have "Snowman Soup" (hot cocoa with little marshmallows floating in it).

No different in my house.

I warm up some vanilla flavored coconut milk (because I happen to have it, not because the vanilla flavored version is actually necessary).

We are not anaphylactic allergic, so getting cocoa where the label says "May contain trace amounts" is currently acceptable for us. As a result, we are using Lake Champlain Chocolates "All-Natural Traditional Hot Chocolate" (which "may" contain trace amounts of a lot of our "no" foods). We also have in the house some Ghirardelli "Natural Unsweetened Cocoa" (which "may" contain trace amounts of soy).

Ah!laska makes a completely safe syrup. I just picked some up at the store. Score--no chocolate powder "bubbles" when using syrup, either.

I put the required amount of cocoa in the bottom of the cup, and because I hate those little chocolate bubbles, I add a TINY, TINY, TINY bit of the coconut milk to the powder and stir it up for almost a full minute. You'd be shocked at how far those little drops go. And by having more powder than liquid in there, you allow the liquid to soak into the powder instead of overpowering it and creating those little bubbles of powder. Once all the powder is wet and kind of creating a "slime" of chocolate, you're safe to pour in the rest of the milk. :)

We're using cut pieces of Whole Foods 365 brand of vanilla marshmallows. They now contain corn starch, so I'm actually going to find out how to make my own damn marshmallows. It also contains dextrose and after researching dextrose (this is a great article about it) I'm glad we only do this once or twice/season given the spike to insulin levels that this whole delicious snack will cause. :/