Hi Friends! Happy Friday!! Is is WHITE & SNOWY where you are?! We got our first round this week and it has been FUN! We love the snow and can’t wait for it to arrive. We are outside as much as we are inside when we are lucky enough to get a nice snowstorm and nothing can quite compare to coming back in & warming up with some delicious Hot Chocolate.
Last year, when I made all my big food changes, what I missed the most was a hot creamy beverage. I used to live for lattes. Weaning off them was hard but now that I am on the other side of my whole milk, double shot espresso lattes, I am never going back. I have finally found a local coffee shop that makes the most delicious almond milk lattes I have ever found, but I had never had success heating almond milk myself. Turns out, I was heating it too hot (my sweet barista just explained something about proteins breaking down past 140 degrees & such. More on that here). But enter cashew milk, and it was a whole new ballgame!
My friend Dr. Christine Maren turned me on to the benefits of cashews–not just in their natural state, but also blended into cream and soaked and made into milk. & they have become a staple in our family’s diet ever since. So when my parents gifted me a Vitamix last year, I couldn’t wait to get experimenting. As many of you know, high speed blenders have the capability to warm the contents if you blend it long enough. This is annoying and also totally awesome, but mostly the latter during wintertime! So I am going to introduce you to my perfected dairy free, gluten free, not-quite-sugar free, Cashew Milk Hot Chocolate. & I promise you will not miss that dairy. (or how it makes you feel!!) I have even tricked my whole milk loving husband into enjoying it. He swears he can’t tell the difference anymore & that…well…THAT pretty much speaks for itself! :)
CASHEW MILK HOT CHOCOLATE
Ingredients
- 1.5 cups of Cashew Milk (you can make it, but I buy the Silk brand at our local health foods market)
- 1/3 cup of chocolate chips (I prefer DF/GF Guittard & in this 1/3 measuring cup, I mix 1/3 milk chocolate & 2/3 dark chocolate chips–our favorite blend!)
- 1/2 tsp of vanilla (not pictured, whoops!)
- marshmallows (if you like them, we get DF/GF/SF Dandies which are too sweet for me, but my kids love them, of course)
Directions
- set high speed blender on the soup setting (as per your manual’s instructions) & let her whirl!
- serve immediately for the creamiest, frothiest hot chocolate!
- ENJOY!
Look at that beautiful, frothy finished product!
I can almost taste it. YUM!
This is THE BEST warm treat for those of you who are looking for a healthier, gluten free, dairy free hot chocolate! I am now a HUGE lover of vitamix hot chocolate. YUM!! 
& hey–have you found me on Instagram yet?? Turns out, I really dig the microblogging thing. I can share all the little things that inspire me without ever sitting at my desk. It’s pretty fun! This week we talked a lot about food. & Kids stuff. & Yoga. FUN! Join me? IG: _styleberry_ I am there a LOT more than here. ;)
& two friendly reminders:
- the stylebabyLOG is back in stock. YIPPEE! You can find it right up there to the right, in the sidebar. Thank you all for your orders this week!! Every order that has been placed has SHIPPED! So look for those in your mailbox any day now. XOxo.
- You will now find also find direct links to my Usborne Books & More Website & a link to my Usborne Book-tique group on Facebook in the sidebar on the right, just under the new little glimpse at my IG feed. I am helping you peek inside a book-a-week throughout 2016, since the website doesn’t do these books justice & I want you to SEE exactly why we are SO passionate about these amazing books! All titles covered can be searched by name in the FB group, so you can use it as a resource whenever you’d like! You can join me here. Thank you for shopping with me!! & I hope you are all enjoying the beautiful books!!
