Thursday's Food Tip: The Ultimate Comfort Food

Some mornings you wake up and charge out of bed, ready to save the world. Other mornings you want to pull the covers over your head and tell the world (including your family) to go away.

On those "undercover" days, try this Chocolate-Cinnamon Toast. There’s nothing quite as comforting as cinnamon and chocolate mixed together. This toast is the ultimate comfort food. It’ll give you a good reason to throw off those covers and charge out of bed on even the gloomiest day.



CHOCOLATE-CINNAMON TOAST

For the chocolate-cinnamon mixture, combine 1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder, 3 tablespoons sugar, and 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon in a small bowl. This will be enough for about 8 slices of toast, so once it’s mixed together put it in a small jar with a lid and store what you don’t use right away in the jar (tightly sealed) in a cool cupboard.

For each piece of chocolate-cinnamon toast, butter a slice of bread and put it on a cookie sheet. Sprinkle a rounded teaspoon of the chocolate mixture over each slice of buttered bread and spread it out evenly with a knife.



Pop the cookie sheet into the broiler or a toaster oven, a few inches from the heat source. But watch the toast VERY carefully. It only takes a minute or so for the butter and sugar and cocoa to melt and the top of the bread to toast slightly. Turn the cookie sheet around if the bread isn’t toasting evenly. But don’t let the chocolate mixture burn.

EXTRA TIP: Some cooks suggest toasting the bread BEFORE buttering it, then adding the chocolate mixture to the toast and broiling it. You might want to try it that way. But I prefer the bread to be crispy and slightly toasted on the top, and soft and untoasted on the bottom.