www.knittedbliss.com: lemon hot chocolate recipe

My charming British husband adores Thornton’s chocolates (which you can only get in the UK), particularly  the Sicilian Lemon ones. I have to agree, they are pretty awesome- yet you seldom see lemon and chocolate together in anything but a box of chocolates. Well, no more!

Ingredients:

3 cups of milk (26 fl. ounces)
60 g dark chocolate
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 cup sugar
1 tbsp grated lemon zest

Directions: melt the dark chocolate into a saucepan of milk on
medium-low heat. Stir in sugar and vanilla extract. Stir in the lemon zest and let simmer very gently for a few minutes, stirring constantly. Then pour into cups and enjoy!

Notes:
I recommend organic lemons if you are grating zest for anything. Otherwise you’re mostly adding a lot of ‘food grade’ wax to your zest as well. But hey, if organic lemons aren’t handy where you are, you certainly will be just fine with normal lemons. Also, whoever is having the  mug that was poured last may find a fair bit of zest in the bottom of their mug.

Substitutions:

• use vanilla flavoured soy milk instead of regular milk; omit additional vanilla, reduce the added sugar to about 1/4 cup
• use 1/3 cup cocoa powder instead of dark chocolate. Not as smooth, but still good!
• use 1/3 cup of agave nectar if you are avoiding refined sugar