Happy New Year friends! I hope however you celebrated you found some happiness and peace. We had a low key New Year’s Eve and a very focused New Year’s Day preparing, cleaning, and shopping for things we need as we enter the home stretch of my pregnancy. I also made a decadent treat for us to fight off the chill!
It finally feels like winter here in Phoenix, and it rained almost all day on New Year’s Day and the day after, so it seemed like it would be perfect to start my focus on Drinks with some special hot chocolate. If you haven’t had real hot chocolate- the kind you make with milk and actual melted chocolate or cocoa powder as opposed to the powdered packs that you add boiled water to- you are missing out! I mean, I enjoy the quick powdered pack as much as anyone- and they are great in a pinch or when you have no time to stand over a stove, but the taste difference is HUGE between that and the real deal.
Since I am completely exhausted by my last month of pregnancy and trying to rebound from the holidays while rearranging the house in a nesting frenzy, I decided it was a great idea to START SIMPLE!

That’s why my first drink is Nutella Hot Chocolate and it literally only has three ingredients:

OK, four if you count topping it with either whipped cream or marshmallows (five if you want to go CRAZY and top with both…)

You literally just heat 2 cups of milk, add 1 tablespoon cocoa (I’m a little bit of a cocoa snob and used a packet I got as a gift as opposed to going out and buying the standard hershey’s…), add 1 tablespoon nutella, and whisk! (OK, you will need more like two tablespoons of nutella if you end up needing to eat one while you make your drink… go ahead… I won’t judge…)
If you are used to super sweet hot cocoa you may want to add some extra nutella or about 1/2 tablespoon of some sugar to the mix, but I like the cocoa flavor and have not had a sweet tooth since getting pregnant. I HAVE had a craving for rich dairy products though, so while you can make this just as easily with nonfat milk, I went for the real stuff-whole milk!! (Also, that’s what we have in the house because that’s what we give our son…) Make sure the milk gets hot but don’t scald it or it will taste weird and I’m guessing will also quickly bubble over!

My sweet, silly husband definitely enjoyed coming home to this treat after grocery shopping for us!

This drink was a perfect way to cap off a long day of not feeling great and perked up the spirits of our little family as we enter some very crazy weeks ahead! I’m planning another hot cocoa recipe for next week since I figure I should indulge in some more warm non-alcoholic goodness before the baby comes and more importantly before our temperatures go back above 75 degrees!
What’s your favorite hot cocoa recipe? Or warm winter drink recipe in general?! I’m looking forward to reprising this little flavor profile once I have this baby and (hopefully) want coffee again (It has been a STRONG aversion my whole pregnancy unfortunately… I like to joke my body is just making it that much more potent when I go back on it in the newborn days…) with a Nutella latte in the weeks to come 🙂