Make your own glow as 2024 comes to an end with homemade hot chocolate

It hasn’t been a good year in Monika’s kitchen. Recipe after recipe went terribly wrong (see last week’s “madeleine madness,” for example). I flubbed so many attempts I began to suspect I was under some evil cookery hex. I started to call it The Curse of 2024.

Oh, and let’s not forget I broke my arm in January while trying to push the car out of our snowy driveway so that we could go out for waffles. I’m curious to see what 2025 will bring. Can I withstand another year of ill-fated food and malfunctioning appendages?

However, when I looked back over the 45 or so recipes I tried this year (subtracting for vacations and holidays), I saw that more things succeeded than failed. If viewed in the context of cooking as experimentation and learning through mistakes, well, then everything was a success.

Even my worst disasters — runny cottage cheese chocolate pudding, cinnamon spice cayenne pepper doughnuts, coconut cream not-a-delight, raw Hasselback sweet potatoes, gluey slow cooker cobbler, Welsh cake-frisbees, popovers that didn’t pop and Greek salad wraps that didn’t wrap — needed but a few small adjustments to be tasty. (Don’t oversalt, don’t mistake the cayenne pepper for cinnamon and don’t even try to bake cobbler in a slow cooker.)

Because my failures loomed so large in my memory, I was genuinely surprised to discover that the majority of 2024’s recipes were delicious. I do have a personal favorite and, in my opinion, the very best thing I made all year: peach coffee cake, which I only baked because the peach Bundt cake I set out to make was a pile of goo. I must have been feeling peachy all around because my second favorite recipe was peach granola, using a whole can of peaches as well as dried peaches for extra-peachy flavor. Third place was a healthy-ish and mostly sugar-free vegan dessert, paleo parfaits, with fresh berries and coconut cream between layers of crumbly ground cashews and cashew butter.

However, there were a host of other winners: crunchy broccoli salad, Greek lemon potatoes, chicken tenders with cherry tomatoes and spinach, cauliflower cheese, roasted beet, orange and feta salad, pea-and-spinach pesto, salsa verde chicken casserole, meatball orzo soup and banana bread waffles.

Readers particularly liked the slow-cooker barbecue lentil chili, which was a bit unexpected. That was a flavorsome first-time recipe that went off without a hitch. (One reader vehemently objected, noting that lentils should never be cooked that long. To each his own!) Another surprising favorite was the Depression-era mocha crazy cake, which readers liked not because it’s the best-tasting but because it’s so easy to make — another vegan treat without butter, eggs or milk. (One fan even dubbed it “rescue cake.”)

In years past, I’ve capped off my annual retrospective with recipes for warming drinks. This year, I’d like to go with a cold-weather classic: dreamy, creamy hot chocolate, scratch-made and warmed on the stovetop, or “on the hob” as my grandmother would say. To someone born in 1907, it meant the cast-iron surface of a wood-fired range, which is what Grandma learned to cook on. Before ranges, a hob referred to the stone shelf in a fireplace where cooking pots sat. It’s also an unneutered ferret. A neutered ferret is a gib. I do my best to crowd your poor brains with useless trivia.

Heat 1 cup of cream with 3 cups of milk in a saucepan, but warm it slowly and don’t let it come to a boil, or you’ll scald it. If cream is too rich for you, use all milk instead. I’ve often made this with 4 cups of nonfat milk because that’s what we had on hand. It’s not as thick but so what? It’s still homemade hot chocolate. While the cream and milk are heating, add 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa (I like Hershey’s Special Dark Cocoa Powder, but you do you) and 1/2 cup rich chocolate or chocolate malt Ovaltine. Stir in 1 teaspoon of vanilla, a pinch of salt, which you can omit but it really makes the cocoa sing. Stir in 1 cup of mini-marshmallows and keep stirring until they melt right into the liquid. If you’re a purist, stop there. If you’re a spicy girl like me, add a 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon or cardamom. A pinch of cayenne pepper is another lively alternative if you’re feeling bold. The only thing I wouldn’t do — and this is me we’re talking about, so that’s a very small number of things — is to add crushed candy canes or a candy cane garnish because the peppermint doesn’t taste good with the malty Ovaltine. On the upside, the recipe doesn’t need any sugar because the marshmallows and Ovaltine make it just sweet enough.

Guess what? While preparing the recipe for this article, I left the hot chocolate on the stovetop for just a minute to feed our cat. The mixture boiled over onto the stove, the counter and the floor. The burner immediately began smoking and I panicked, trying to think how I could get the hot cocoa back into the saucepan. In the end, I soaked up the nonburnt pools of chocolate with paper towels and squeezed back into the pot (except what was on the floor, for those who think I’m the kind of cook who needs to clarify). I have to say, even with scalded milk, that was the most delicious batch of hot chocolate I’ve ever made. Life is full of twists and turns. Furthermore, I suspect it’s our cat who’s been stirring up trouble all along.

But if you manage to heat the hot cocoa without getting it all over your kitchen, you’ll find that it’s thick and satisfying and somehow makes everything a little cozier. My favorite yuletide phrase is “merry and bright.” We don’t say it about any other time of the year because it describes the particular joy that comes from being with friends and family on a dark winter night. We can’t speed the coming of the light, but we can make our own glow.

Here’s to a luminous 2025!

Winter Glow Hot Chocolate

1 cup cream

3 cups milk

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (regular or dark)

½ cup Ovaltine (chocolate malt or rich chocolate)

1 cup mini-marshmallows, plus more for garnish

1 teaspoon vanilla

Pinch of salt

½ teaspoon cinnamon, cardamom or ginger (optional)

Slowly warm cream and milk in a saucepan on medium-low heat. While warming, stir in cocoa powder, Ovaltine, marshmallows, vanilla, salt or optional spice. Cocoa powder may clump at first but keep stirring. Stir until hot but not boiling (that will scald the milk) and until marshmallows have melted. Pour into mugs and garnish with more mini-marshmallows. Serves 4-6. Keeps in refrigerator for three days.