A friend and reader messaged me with a question recently, and it got me thinking. She asked me about drinking chocolate, which I know I have included in more than one of my books over the years, and I specifically referenced it in Child of Crows. I responded with a brief description, contemplated doing a recipe (it’s more a tutorial, really) and then started thinking about the role these vital ingredients to human survival play in fiction. There are books known for their rich and detailed descriptions of food and beverages. The Hobbit springs immediately to my mind. I’m sure some will be named in the comments, with fondness! There are other books where it might not be mentioned at all (a feat, since every human must consume nearly daily), and books where it gets a cursory inclusion almost as an afterthought or prop.

Without further ado, here’s how to make drinking chocolate, which is… well, I’ll tell the story after the recipe!

• 1 tbsp dutch-processed chocolate
• 1 c water or milk

That’s it. Now, from here you need to know some things, and add some things. This is a little like storytelling, isn’t it?

If you use blocks of chocolate, obviously this is going to be the tastiest. However, I use cocoa powder. Dutch-processed cocoa powder is the best for this, as the processing keeps it from being as bitter as a regular baking cocoa will be. To prevent this from clumping, I put the powder in the bottom of my cup, and add in about a teaspoonful of my hot liquid (I use water as I’m lactose intolerant*) and then stir this into a paste. Slowly, with stirring, add your remaining hot liquid. For a large mug, start out with two tablespoons and two teaspoons to make your cocoa paste! This stirring will take a minute, but you’ll have a smooth, dark, lovely drinking chocolate.

And now, you can embellish to your heart’s desire. Want it sweet? Stir some sugar or sweetener in now, or earlier in the process with the cocoa powder. Want it richer? A dollop of heavy cream is luscious* just like it is in coffee. Want to add a flavor? Take a bag of herbal tea, and add it to the hot liquid to steep, then use that to make your chocolate. Mom introduced me to this as a child, and things like cranberry tea make it taste like chocolate-covered cherries. Of course, you can use hot coffee which is what I do most of the time, to make a mocha.

Now, how did this simple and wonderful beverage become a recurring theme in my writing? Well, easy enough. It’s what the kids these days call a core memory. I asked for a cup of hot chocolate while traveling in Britain with family, at the age of eighteen (coincidentally, the same age as the young lady in the story I quote above) and what I got was drinking chocolate. I was startled to take a sip and find it dark and much like black coffee. Then I learned that I was expected to add cream and sugar, like to coffee, to taste. I fell in love. Hot Cocoa in the US is super sweet, tastes of powdered milk, and while sometimes I do like it… I’d rather have this and doctor it up to perfection for my own personal tastebuds.

Many years ago, long before that encounter with drinking chocolate, I was told there are only so many plots in the world. They’ve all been done. Mapped out, writers have explored them, why bother doing it again? Well, because you can take simple ingredients and add your own taste to them. You can take a plot, stretch it, fold in some fruits and nuts, add a little salt, a little sugar, a little fat… all the good things that you can think of, but no one else has before you. The plots are all the same, true. This doesn’t make the stories all the same. You should write that idea, even if it has been ‘done before.’

Because only you can do to it what you like best. And then? Well, you have to find readers who enjoy it, too. But that’s a beast of a whole ‘other shape!

*I’m mildly lactose intolerant, which means heavy cream is fine for me, I can’t do milk or half-and-half. Plus, it has less carbs!