Hot Cocoa (Guilt-free and Gluten-free)

2 cups powdered Swerve
1 cup cocoa (American-process preferred)
2 1/2 cups powdered fat free milk
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons cornstarch or tapioca starch
1 pinch cayenne pepper, or more to taste, if desired
Hot water

I absolutely adore hot chocolate. I like it with whipped cream. I like it with marshmallows. I like it with booze. My sister-in-law, Nancy, makes great hot cocoa and gives it away at Christmas. Well, we didn’t see her last year and I was totally craving some hot cocoa and I didn’t want to buy some from the store, so I figured I’d make my own recipe. I was looking for inspiration and came across a recipe from Alton Brown. It looked great, but I knew I had to make it healthier, so I started testing recipes using Swerve all-natural zero-calorie sweetener and now I have a recipe that rivals Nancy’s, but doesn’t wreak havoc on your waistline (or keep you up at night!)
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DIRECTIONS
Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl and incorporate evenly. In a small pot, heat water to just under boiling
Fill your mug 1/3 to 1/2 full with the mixture, depending on how strong you like your cooca. Pour in hot water. Stir to combine. Seal the rest in an airtight container, keeps indefinitely in the pantry. This also works great with warm milk.
Here’s the skinny:
First, I used Swerve instead of powdered sugar, saving over 200 grams of sugar and almost 1000 calories out of the batch.
Also, I used nonfat dry milk instead of whole dry milk, saving another 1000 calories and 75 grams of fat, in addition to over 200mg of cholesterol
CALORIES SAVED: 1984
FAT SAVED: 75g
SATURATED FAT SAVED: 42g
SUGAR SAVED: 307g
CHOLESTEROL SAVED: 237mg