A leap day miracle!

Two posts in one day, what is this world coming to!  I guess leap day is getting to me.  In honor of this special day I made myself a special treat.  My post-college roommate and I used to get drinking chocolate at a coffee shop near us and I have been wanting some for quite a while now.  Today I decided to do something about it.  The Internet is a wonderful/dangerous thing. 

I checked out a couple of recipes online and the consensus seems to be some combination of cream, milk and chocolate.  Extra ingredients varied by recipe.  The one I chose was pretty straight forward.

2 oz heavy cream
6-8 oz  milk
1 cinnamon stick
1 vanilla bean (or 1-2 tsp vanilla)
2 oz chopped dark chocolate of your choice

Heat cream, milk and cinnamon stick slowly on the stove.  If using a vanilla bean, split down the center and add to milk mixture.  If using liquid vanilla (I did) add after heating.  Heat for 15-20 minuets.  Remove from heat, remove cinnamon stick and vanilla bean.  Stir in chocolate.  I had extra cream so I whipped some with sugar for a sweet topping. 

It was so delicious!!  I'm thinking it may become a cold weather treat for me.  Saying I have heavy cream lying around.  Which is not all the time.  That is probably a good thing.  The cinnamon in the milk added a delicious depth of flavor.  I used ordinary semi-sweet chocolate chips because that is what I had on hand but you could probably use any chocolate you like to eat.  I prefer dark chocolate so the semi-sweet chips worked well for me.  The cream in the chocolate and the whipped cream on top made it really rich.Try this sometime, you won't be disappointed!!