Hotta Chocolatta

The weather is getting cool.  The leaves have changed a lot just within the last couple days.  Of course, that means it's time to put aside your iced tea and fix yourself some COCOA!  When I was growing up, we didn't drink hot chocolate at my house, we drank cocoa.  We generally made it with milk heated in a pan on the stove (before the days of our first microwave oven which came to our kitchen in the late 70s I believe), with Nestle's Quik powder stirred in.  We put marshmallows in sometimes, I'm sure.  The milk would have been whole or 2%, depending what decade we were in at the time.  Yes, I remember the milkman delivering milk in glass bottles with a layer of cream on top when I was a wee girl.  The 2% plastic 2-gallon jugs with spouts from High's and the plastic bags of milk from Martin's came later.

I just had a cup of cocoa with marshmallows.  Thanks to Pandora introducing me to new old music all the time, what went through my head was "Hotta hotta chocolatta, flip a dippa da da dada da da."  Unfortunately, I don't have a good memory for lyrics.  Fortunately, the internet has an excellent memory for lyrics.  This fun and not so famous ditty was recorded by the DeJohn Sisters (who?) in 1956 and by Ella Fitzgerald sometime.  Don't the DeJohn Sisters look like they had fun together?

Looking at the picture, I had to wonder what their first names were.  They were Julie and Dux De John (born DiGiovanni).  Dux?  C'mon, what was it really?  No one names their baby girl Dux.

The song was written by Milton Drake and Vic Mizzy. I think it's fun that it took two guys to write these lyrics.  Can you just picture the conversation that brought this about?  Read the lyrics and tell me what you think:

Hotta hotta chocolatta

Flip a dip a whippa cream in the middle of a

Hotta hotta chocolatta; pick ‘er up and drink ‘er down

Square cake, round cake,  piece of pound cake;

Grab a chunk and dunk a hunk in the middle of a

hotta, hotta chocolatta; pick ‘er up and drink ‘er down

When you’re going loco; you’re out of your cocoa

Go down to the old jukery spot, and you gotta drink a lotta

hotta hotta chocolatta

Flip a dip a whippa cream in the middle of a

Hotta hotta chocolatta; pick ‘er up and drink ‘er down

Either they really liked their cocoa, or they had added a little something extra to their hotta chocolatta that I don't put in mine. They must have been sitting at a diner with a red checkered tablecloth when they got their inspiration.  I'm thinking those lyrics got written down on a napkin.

I like cocoa because it's chocolate, it's warm, it's chocolate, it's creamy, it's chocolate, it's pretty and it's chocolate.  

So, right now, go fix yourself a hotta chocolatta-- whether it's Swiss Miss, skim milk with Hershey's syrup & marshmallows (my usual version these days) or something fancy with a dip a whippa cream.  I like the idea of adding a piece of cake to the experience, although I'm not personally a dunker.  While you're sipping, click on this link and listen to the perkiest (and maybe only) hot chocolate song of all time!

Hotta Chocolatta on youtube

This is a lovely hot chocolate & bagel I had at the Wellsboro Diner.  Mmmm.