Make Your Own Chocolate-Chocolate Milk

Recently my children's once reasonable passion for chocolate milk took an abrupt turn--blossoming from love into a full-blown mania. It all started when I bought a case of organic chocolate milk sippy boxes that was on sale at the supermarket. Now this is something I would never have been able to purchase in the city because it would have been too heavy to carry home and our neighborhood market never had cases of anything on sale anyhow, but now that we have a car and a house, bulk purchases have become possible. So I brought this case home and that's when they kind of lost their minds. This box of individual sized servings of chocolate milk turned them into addicts. They started sneaking the stuff, hording it, breaking into the fridge to score a box before dinner. I knew things had gone too far when I found Conor, wearing only a diaper, scaling the inside of the fridge, hanging onto the vegetable drawer with one hand while grasping for a box with the other, his sister silently routing him on from a dark corner.

Also, the stuff wasn't on sale anymore so a cheaper alternative, that I could dole out myself, was in order.
I stumbled upon a stash of Scharffen Berger cocoa in the cupboard, leftover from some baking recipe, and inside was a recipe for homemade chocolate syrup--yes!

All that was needed was the cocoa, water, sugar and heat. You can basically use as much sugar as you'd like, but I took it easy because I'm trying to ween Belle and Conor off of the seriously sweet stuff they've been imbibing. 

Basically you are just heating up enough water, cocoa and sugar to combine the ingredients, but you don't want to overheat them or, God forbid, bring it to a boil. 

After it cooled I put some in a squirt bottle for adding anytime to hot or cold milk.

And the leftover went into a little pitcher for the table.

If you make this yourself you'll see that once it has chilled, it will be a bit thick, not like Hershey's syrup, more like a beautiful chocolaty paste (see above).
Now after school, we just whip out the squirt bottle of chocolate and everyone can make their own glass from scratch. It tastes delicious (and it doesn't hurt to use the best quality cocoa you can find).
Who needs a chocolate cow?—Caroline