HotCocoa

1 Cup Dutched Cocoa 2.5 Cups Dry Nonfat Milk Powder 2 Cups Granulated Sweetener 3 Teaspoons Corn Starch 1 Teaspoon Salt 1/4 - 1/2 Teaspoon Cayenne Pepper

Preheat oven to 300. Line two cookie sheets with parchment. Spread milk powder evenly across both sheets. Bake milk powder for 20 minutes, swapping the sheets' locations halfway through. The toasted milk powder will be golden brown and will taste very different through a combination of maillard reaction and caramelizing.

Use a food processor on the sweetener plus corn starch. Give it at least 30 seconds on the highest speed. This will pulverize the sugar and the corn starch will keep it from clumping so it will dissolve more easily in hot water. If you use confectioner's sugar, reduce the corn starch by 1 teaspoon. Keep the corn starch in even if you use sucralose or other fake sugar - besides acting as an anti-caking agent, it also adds body to the hot cocoa.

When the milk powder has cooled, run it through the food processor. It will have baked into a big crumbly solid, and you want to get it back down to a fine powder.

Mix everything together. I put everything back in the food processor and whiz it up on the highest setting, but that was at the limits of what my food processor could do. Improvise as necessary.

Store in an airtight container.

To make hot cocoa: Put 1/4 cup of mix in a mug, add 2 oz boiling water, and mix the ever-loving-crap out of it with a fork until it is glossy and smooth with no clots of powder stuck to the mug or floating around. Then add another 6 oz of boiling water.