Gingerbread Hot Cocoa Mix

My Mom still fills a Christmas stocking for me every year. It’s the same stocking I’ve had since I was little, one that she knitted for me herself (and it’s the biggest one, of course). Every years, she fills it with candy, bags of tea, and goofy little things. Last year, one of the things in it was a box of gingerbread hot cocoa mix.

It was delicious. I wanted more, and while my first impulse was to head online to buy it, I thankfully stopped and remembered that I make my own regular hot cocoa mix, so why not try to replicate this deliciousness myself?

I flipped over the container to the ingredients list. Besides the cocoa, sugar, and multi-syllabic wonders of modern chemistry listed, I discovered the two magic seasonings: ginger and cinnamon.

Well. That made sense.

So, here’s a recipe for gingerbread hot cocoa mix. Dump all of the following into a container and shake, shake, shake:

• 2 ½ cups powdered milk
• 2 cups confectioner’s sugar
• 1 cup cocoa powder (Dutch-processed, if possible)
• 1 tsp salt (fine-grained, if you can)
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• ½ tsp ginger

Note that you may have to use a whisk or something similar to break down clumps of the confectioner’s sugar. Just look at the mix for clumps; if you see any, whisk away.

To make normal hot cocoa mix, skip the last two ingredients and add a little cayenne pepper.

May it comfort you on a cold day.