Just pretend this isn’t weird: If reincarnation exists, I was Maya. Maybe Inca. And if my computer background (Chichen Itza) doesn’t prove it, my passion for drinking chocolate absolutely does. Alex is practically South American Indian in this life, so he shares the love.

Drinking chocolate is like hot chocolate, but thicker, richer, and often spiced or flavored. Since tonight marked our first attempt to create it ourselves, we decided to go classic. We swirled bitter dark chocolate and sugar into steaming milk, and topped it with whipped cream and chocolate shavings. All together now: Sigh.

Ingredients:
2 cups milk
3 oz. bitter chocolate, chopped, plus a bit extra for shavings
1/3 cup sugar, or more to taste
whipped cream

Instructions:
Heat the milk on low heat over a stove. When it’s sufficiently hot, add the chopped chocolate, and stir it into the milk. Stir in the sugar, and remove from heat. Top with whipped cream and chocolate shavings.

First guest blogger! Whooo!

Sorry, had to be done. This is Danny, the Als’ roommate for the summer, and I’ve been granted a rare opportunity to appear on Two Fat Als due to my position as our de facto bartender. In what may or may not become a regular feature, we decided Wednesday should be celebrated with an appropriately named Drink of the Wednesday. When I say we, I really mean Alanna, but whatever: tonight’s drink, courtesy of my being part Brazilian, is a caipirinha. It’s a drink that’s become fairly popular in the U.S., but once you see how easy it is to make, you may never pay eight bucks for one in a bar again. And remember: if you’re under 21, you didn’t learn this here.

Caipirinha
1 lime (or 2 key limes)
2 tbsp sugar
Crushed ice
2 shots cachaça

Cachaça is an un-aged Brazilian sugar cane liquor that’s pretty similar to rum, and is fairly easy to find in most liquor stores. If you can’t get your hands on it, or you’re feeling lazy, you can use rum or vodka. Just know that you won’t be making a caipirinha–rum makes it a caipirão, and using vodka turns it into a caipiroska. Go figure.

Whatever liquor you’re using, the instructions are the same. Start by cutting off the ends of the lime; because the peel contains the bitter lime oil that, although it gives the drink its punch, can be overpowering if you include all of the peel. Then, quarter the lime and put the pieces into an old-fashioned glass (one of those short cocktail glasses, like you’d get a whiskey sour in). Add the sugar, and muddle it into the limes (muddling is a fancy word for mushing, ideally done with a pestle though I’ve used the handle of a ladle in a pinch). Then just add ice to about half an inch below the glass’s rim, pour in the cachaça, stir, and enjoy. A word to the wise, though: remember that, although you may not taste it, you just tossed in two shots of 80-proof liquor. Caipirinhas are one of the most refreshing drinks I know, but they pack quite a punch, and you may want to keep that in mind.

Knowing that we’d be working on various graduate school applications and this blog late into tonight, we decided give dessert a little kick. No, not alcohol (it’s not that bad … yet), but sweet sweet caffeine. This is a low-cal version of the frappachino, and I think ours would have tasted the same, except we perhaps did not blend sufficiently and kept swallowing ice chunks. Still loves it. You can make it as sickly sweet as you like by adjusting the sugar content, and the whip makes it extra yummy.

Ingredients:
ice
coffee
soy milk (or really any milk)
sugar/sweetener
chocolate syrup
whip cream

Instructions:
Add about 3 cups of ice to blender. Pour coffee 3/4 up the ice. Pour milk until it is level with the ice. Add as much sugar/sweetener as you want (probably like 3 tbsp) and about 3 tbsp of chocolate syrup. Blend, and top with whip!

These smoothies have the potential to be extremely low-calorie, and they taste really, really good. We made them for dessert, but they can work easily for a mid-morning, mid-afternoon, late-night or (and this is Alex’s favorite meal of the day) pre-breakfast snack. Making smoothies is more of an art than a science, so don’t worry about exact measurements. Just throw the ingredients in a blender until smooth.

Ingredients:
2 cups frozen strawberries
1 cup frozen blueberries
1/2 cup ice
1 cup non/low fat vanilla yogurt (we used Dannon’s light and fit)
100% fruit juice (we used Dole’s berry blend)
2 tbsp honey

Instructions:
Put frozen fruit and ice into the blender, add yogurt. Pour in juice until it is comes about 1/2 way up the fruit/ice/yogurt mixture. Add honey, blend.