SWEET TEA: Hot cocoa, for all who lost recipe

LITTLE ROCK — Every year, one or two folks admit to losing the Sweet Tea hot chocolate recipe, for which we all have Sweet Tea’s mother to thank.

The recipe, not the losing.

Every year the story goes something like this one from Ed Bibb: “I saved the recipe, but somehow it was lost.”

Or Sandy Bakke: “I thought I’d put the recipe ... in a safe place. The place may be safe, but I’ve forgotten where! ... Of course, I’ll need to bring some to school once all know I’ve the recipe again - that’s what happened when I made my mother’s recipe for zucchini bread.”

In 2005, Maureen Johnson was the first of the miscreants and as of today is the founding president of the Lost Hot Chocolate Recipe Society:

“I know you said you wouldn’t print the Hot Chocolate recipe again,” she wrote, “but I hope you’ll reconsider.

“I had your recipe on my fridge for months, and last week I went to Kroger to get the ingredients.

I bought them, but in leaving the store I lost my folder that had my list and your recipe in it!

“I went back to the store, and some employees even looked for it. I looked in the parking lot under cars, and I’m sure I got some strange looks from shoppers.”

Then Maureen played on my sympathies.

“The reason I wanted to make the recipe is my mom lives with us, and, with the weather getting colder, she gets cold. And that’s due to the medicines she takes. She just turned 90. She loves hot chocolate, and the store bought stuff is really so-so.

“So please make an exception, and I’ll be forever grateful, and mom will have a warm tummy.”

Her mom, I am happy to report, is 95 and still living with her daughter and son-in-law, and still drinking hot chocolate.

But not my mama’s recipe. Maureen, see, lost the recipe again.

So this is for Maureen’s mom - Ingeborg Junius, born in Ulzen, Germany, in 1915; moved to Chicago in 1927; and worked as a waitress at the Northshore Country Club in Chicago until she was 85.

For Ingeborg Junius

Find a huge plastic container and pour into it:

One 8-quart box of powdered milk. (The brand-name versions work better.)

A 1- 1/2- or 2-pound box of instant chocolate drink (like Nesquik).

One 12-ounce jar of powdered creamer. The nonfat works well.

One 1-pound box of powdered sugar. (Life is short, I reiterate, and sugar is cheap.)

Last year, I added about a cup (but do your own measuring) of Hershey’s unsweetened chocolate powder.

Shake it.

To make a cup, fill a mug a quarter to a third deep with the mix, add almost boiling water. Stir.

This year’s Sweet Tea Hot Chocolate movie recommendations: The version of A Christmas Carol with Alastair Sim as Scrooge, which ties with Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol (which you can buy on DVD) as the best film versions.