Hot chocolate can be made using chopped chocolate, a pre-made mix, or even hot chocolate bombs, but Alton Brown has his own unique recipe. His modern hot chocolate recipe is technically hot cocoa, made with cocoa powder instead of the solid chocolate used in hot chocolate, but it's far from tame and watered-down.

Brown's hot cocoa recipe combines nonfat dry milk powder, powdered sugar, Dutch-process cocoa powder, cornstarch, salt, and an optional pinch of cayenne pepper, to pay homage to the earliest versions of hot chocolate that were spices with chiles. He also offers a recipe for homemade marshmallows to go on top.

What sets Brown's recipe apart is that he toasts the milk powder in the oven until it's browned, which adds buttery toffee and malt flavors to the final cup. Brown mixes the powder with the other ingredients to create 22 quarter-cup servings of hot cocoa mix, and each portion is mixed with 3/4 of a cup of boiling water to serve.