La neige finalement est au rendez-vous! (Hot Chocolate with Cream)

For once in my life (really quite once, trust me), I have been efficient and had actually booked two ski holidays (Oberjoch and Flaine) for the winter season well in advance. So November came, but not the snow. Nada in December either. Oh oh...

Though I was really happy with the gentle winter, I must say that I was starting to panic as no snow = no ski. And what am I going to do with my ski reservations then?

Then on Tuesday morning, at around 10am (I remember that as I was driving to shop in Metzingen), the first flakes started to fall. It was -1ºC. It continued to snow and didn't stop till Wednesday evening. This meant that we woke up on Wednesday morning to more than 30cm of snow all of a sudden. It was -6ºC.

Panic aboard everywhere. It took me ages to drive the kids to school. Eldest Boy arrived in school 35 minutes late, Baby Girl nearly 2 hours. I got my car stuck in snow in a few places and couldn't enter Baby Girl's school's street, for example. On my way from lunch at Neuhausen to pick her up in Stuttgart, I had the shock of my life when I saw two eternal lanes of trucks ahead of me (it made it to the news on TV)...

As Hubby so conveniently found himself away in Italy this fateful week, it fell upon me to remove the snow in my driveway. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to drive my car into my garage. And if somebody should trip and fall in front of my house, apparently I would be liable for it.

It took me 3 hours to get the job done. And a good 20 minutes were en plus as I decided to shovel the snow in front of my elderly neighbours' garage as well. No, it wasn't so much out of goodwill as embarrassment - as I've been laughing at the Germans for being so precise about what is yours and mine, and I didn't want to be the butt of my own joke. They never thanked me for it, by the way.

The kids were ecstatic about the snow, of course. They got out all of their ski suits, gloves etc and went to school in really good spirits. We had 2 terraces and a big garden full of snow and I allowed them to make a snowman with the snow in the small terrace (didn't want water all over the house). Well, at least some people were happy.

On Sunday, Hubby took everyone to a small slope in the forest near our house to snow sled. They had great fun while we were stressed out keeping an eye out for the other sleds, going to the bottom of the slope to help the babies up etc. Then of course they kept fighting for the bigger sled and we had to manage that as well.

On our way back, Hubby said that it would be nice if we could have a hot chocolate and some cake and while it was too late to be baking then, I thought that I could certainly make some hot chocolate for the tribe.

Home-made Hot Chocolate :

250g of Dark Unsweetened Dessert Chocolate (broken up into pieces)
1 Tbsp of Fruit Sugar
3/4 litre of Fresh Milk

Heavy cream for whipping
Fruit Sugar
A touch of Rum
Van Houten's unsweetened chocolate powder
Ground Cinnamon (optional)

In a heavy-bottomed casserole pour in 100ml of water (to prevent burning) and milk. Melt the chocolate pieces in it, but do not let the liquid boil. Add in the sugar and the remaining milk and keep stirring over low-medium heat.

Whip the cream with the sugar and rum till stiff. Pour the chocolate into mugs and scoop some cream on top of it. Sprinkle the chocolate powder, and if you wish, ground cinnamon or even chocolate shavings over it.

It has stopped snowing since. I'm fine with it as I really find it a pain, but it would be nice if just before we leave for our 1st ski trip this season (to Oberjoch in Germany late-February), it should snow enough for us to be able to ski :-).

PS : Photo Snow 1 = My larger terrace and Photo Snow 2 = My driveway in front of the garage. The red Renault Espace stuck out on the pavement was my car. Really stuck.